


Water Is Moving Underground

by lazy_daze



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-20
Updated: 2012-06-20
Packaged: 2017-11-08 05:00:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 49,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/439418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazy_daze/pseuds/lazy_daze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With over 95% of the population wiped out following biological warfare gone wrong, Jeff's patrolling for the resistance - yes, he's fully aware of how bad sci-fi movie that sounds, but when the most powerful of the survivors start setting up a seat of power to subjugate the weaker remaining citizens, what do you do but resist? - when he comes across Jared and saves his life.</p><p>Humans that survived the event were left with new abilities. Jeff's unpredictable premonition ability flares up hard, and he knows he has to protect Jared and keep him close, not just for his own good but perhaps the good of what's left of the human race. Not that he has to tell Jared that.</p><p>Jeff takes Jared back to the resistance base, a perilous trip that bonds the two men and changes the relationship between them in ways neither were expecting.</p><p>When rumors of a new weapon reach the other side, their spies kidnap Jared, forcing realizations, confessions, and the revelation of what Jared really is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Water Is Moving Underground

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [spn_j2_bigbang](http://spn-j2-bigbang.livejournal.com/) challenge 2012! Many thanks to my wonderful artist [scarletscarlet](http://scarletscarlet.livejournal.com) whose art post can be found [here](http://scarletscarlet.livejournal.com/91412.html), and to my brilliant beta [riyku](http://riyku.livejournal.com/).
> 
> Fic contains embedded art including one NSFW piece.

Water Is Moving Underground

It had never been this strong before. Usually the tickle started in the back of Jeff's brain once he'd had a good few seconds close to someone, if it was going to happen at all; this time, there was the orangey glow of a fire on the evening-dark horizon and one tall figure silhouetted in front, too far off to make out anything clear, but the itch started up maddening and insistent, like a spider bite at the base of Jeff's skull.

No - not one figure. Three. Two approaching from the left. The itch became a pulse, and Jeff broke into a run.

  


The gun still felt hot as Jeff shoved it back into his holster. He wasn't sure if his proficiency with guns was something he'd always had, or if it was something that had unfolded along with his other new abilities after the event. He hadn't had much call to use guns before.

The two men he'd shot lay on the other side of the fire, and the tall guy stumbled backwards, hands up, as Jeff circled around to him.

He was saying something - "No, please, I'll give you anything you want!" - but it was hard to hear him or look at him straight on, because of what he was doing to Jeff's senses, all his normal perception shot to hell by waves of something that was not quite pain radiating in punishing waves from the back of his head.

Jeff held up a hand, rubbed the other one over his eyes. "I'm not going to hurt you. I was trying to save you, believe it or not. Just - shut up a second, please?"

The guy did, and Jeff rode the wave of sensation until it dimmed. It was a feeling he hadn't come up with the words to describe yet - like a muscle cramp but surging through the back of his head, deep and aching and gripping.

He shook his head and blinked his eyes open. He couldn't even sort out everything the guy was throwing at him, but the one thing he knew - almost underneath conscious thought, like a primal drive - was that this guy was important. Really important, and certainly a life worth saving over the two schmucks who'd been planning on robbing then killing him.

It was odd, the difference; that the premonition about those guys had been low and faint but clear. He'd known exactly what they were going to do, had seen it play out in ghostly echoes - the knife sliding out of the shorter one's pocket, slipping thin and deadly between this guy's ribs as the other grabbed his pack.

This guy was giving him more than he could deal with but no details, just a big blaring noise of _keep this kid safe_. Funny how just when Jeff thought he had a handle on his ability, it would blindside him with something new. He figured the same was true of most people though - just under eight months wasn't long enough for most people to feel out the limits and reaches of a whole new set of abilities.

His vision cleared, finally, enough to see the guy still standing a few feet away, half crouched, Jeff unsure whether it was in submission or preparation to run. He still had his hands up.

"I said, I'm not gonna hurt you," said Jeff. "You can quit looking like a rabbit gone tharn."

The guy laughed, then, a noise that seemed like it surprised him. He straightened.

"If I hadn't just seen you waste those two guys, you would have had me feeling totally safe. A guy who quotes _Watership Down_ is suddenly less threatening."

Jeff let his mouth quirk up in acknowledgement. "But you did just see me waste those two guys. To save your life, I gotta add."

The guy shrugged, and as he relaxed he got taller, shoulders easing back. His face was still pretty young, though; it had that drawn look most people did these days, hunger and the sort of ground-in fear for your life that had become a familiar companion by now, but he couldn't have been older than twenty, twenty-five at most. "Murder in cold blood minus the literary reference minus the fact you _say_ it was to save my life, plus the fact you look like something out of _Apocalypse Now_ and are carrying at least three guns I can see, puts me somewhere in between terrified and alarmed. Which is pretty much what I'm used to waking up with, so I guess the literary reference was pretty powerful."

Jeff hadn't heard so many words spoken in one go by anyone in at least a month. He closed his mouth on a gape, and put out his hand. "Jeff."

"Oh, right," said the guy, and stepped cautiously forward. His hand was big and his grip tentative at first, but it became firm and sure once Jeff took it, with a strength belied by his open expression. You could tell a lot about a guy from his handshake. "Jared."

Jeff nodded in welcome.

Jared frowned and shifted his pack on his shoulder. "So - why did you kill those guys? What did you mean, to save my life?"

Jeff looked at him steadily. "They were going to stab you for your pack. Way you're carrying it, it's got weight, most probably food and a few bottles of clean water."

Jared's eyes widened, and he readjusted his grip on his pack again. "How do you know that?"

Jeff gave him a smile without much humor in it. "Same way people can do all sorts of things you don't expect, these days."

"Oh," said Jared. "That's your thing." He waved an apologetic hand; there was an odd social nicety that some people had over abilities, as though it was rude to ask what people could do, or pry. Jeff thought it was ridiculous, but trust humans to bother with etiquette before even coming up with a good name for something.

Jeff cocked his head, even though he knew what Jared meant. "Thing?"

"Yeah, you know how everyone has a thing? Being psychic, or seeing the future, or however it works, that must be your thing." He said it like there should be a capital letter on it. Your Thing.

Jeff bit his lip. "My ability. Yeah. I can tell what people are gonna do. Not exactly, and not every time, but I get an idea. Usually something pretty important, usually in the near future, and usually if it's gonna be really good or really bad - and you can guess which one of those is more common."

Jared grinned. "You're telling me you're more likely to come across someone who wants to kill you than wants to give you a million dollars?"

"Sorry to dash your illusions, kid."

"Not like a million dollars would be any good these days anyway," said Jared, shrugging. He looked curiously at Jeff. "Did, uh--"

Jeff raised an eyebrow. "I'm not shy about it. You can ask."

"Do you know what I'm gonna do? I mean, I'm not gonna jump up and do something awful right now, I think, but--"

Jeff shook his head quickly enough to look sure, but not quickly enough to look as though he was lying, even though he was. He'd never felt the need to lie about it before, and he didn't even know exactly what kind of signal he was getting from Jared, but he felt like it wasn't something Jared needed to know. Not yet anyway. "Nope. You're just gonna have to surprise me."

Which wasn't a lie, anyway. _Important, important, do not let him die or leave and get away from you,_ wasn't like anything he'd gotten before, and he was getting the feeling - a good old fashioned gut one - that whatever it was, Jared was going to end up surprising him.

Jared glanced around nervously, then eyed the dead bodies slumped on the other side of the fire. They were off the side of a road that led to a clump of buildings, and a town a little further on; open scrub stretched the other side, past the fire.

Blood spread dark from the headshots and soaked into the dusty ground. The smell of it and the beacon of the fire would attract the tough rangy wildlife that remained - thankfully, without any additional abilities, at least none that Jeff had observed. Telekinetic cougars wouldn't be a fun foe. Even so, they were a danger to anyone travelling out here, but Jeff was pretty confident of his instincts and gun if they stayed here and, as the night air chilled, they'd be thankful of the fire.

Problem was, Jared didn't look so comfortable at the idea of bunking down next to the dead guys. He glanced at them again, then ran a nervous hand through his hair. "Look - Jeff. Thank you for saving my life, but you don't gotta stay. I'm sure you have places to be."

 _Wherever you are_. Jeff shrugged. "Nothing that won't wait. I at least wanna see you safe through the night. Call it making sure my energy wasn't wasted."

Jared quirked his eyebrow, but shrugged. "Okay, fine. But I don't - call me a wuss, whatever, but I don't want to stay here." His eyes skittered away from the bodies again.

Jeff hooked a finger out into the scrub a little. "No problem. Put this fire out, we can set up another one further out."

Jared looked out on the dark scrub, then back towards the buildings, the crumbling pavement of the road, weeds already growing through cracks in the tarmac. Nature didn't take long to ferociously take back what was hers. "Would it be safer back where there's more protection?

Jeff smirked. "Buildings mean shelter, but the bigger animals also know they mean food, whether alive or dead - something to eat. They form a pack if they sense fresh meat in the built up areas, which they don't generally feel safe enough to do out in the open."

Jared paled. "Animals?"

Jeff shook his head. "You really aren't used to this, are you, kid? Yeah. After all the people who want to shoot you for your pack, the next thing you gotta worry about are all the other predators. We've got a lot of hungry cougars out here, and pickings are getting slim - very old and very rotten too."

"Holy crap. And here I thought this was gonna be easy." Jared adjusted the strap of his pack uncomfortably, glancing around like cougars were going to leap out and maul him at that second. Then he shook his head and his face came into determined focus. He looked up at Jeff, fear swallowed up in stubbornness. "Okay. You're the boss. Lead the way."

Jeff wanted to pry, but he could feel the heaviness in his legs and knew he should probably get some food and sleep, and the shadows under Jared's eyes spoke of the same. Chit-chat could wait 'til light. "Follow me."

He took them a mile out into the scrub, navigating eastward by the stars - and wasn't he grateful that he’d been a Cub Scout when he was a kid. It had come in useful. Jared started to sway, listing with tiredness, so Jeff stopped them, spread out a rough area and started scratching out a small fire. It would be a signal to animals, but less so out here where they had more food and safer options closer toward town. Jeff, for all he needed sleep, was confident his instincts would keep them safe. A good mix of regular instincts and sprinkling of preternatural ones. And a fire was something he didn't like to go without - for comfort as much as warmth, both of which Jared needed.

Jared had a pretty decently stocked pack, despite otherwise seeming clueless about surviving on his own. He spread out his roll and wrapped himself tight, face tilted towards the flickering small fire, and he was asleep in moments.

Jeff studied the kid as he chewed on some jerky. He looked younger in his sleep, but then most people did. He had a strong brow, strangely delicate eyebrows, a slack pink mouth, smooth skin with the barest hint of stubble darkening his chin and upper lip, like he still kept shaving as regularly as he could. His eyelashes were short but fine, soft looking as they fluttered against the drawn, dark skin under his eyes.

He was pretty, and fairly interesting even just beyond the face, but he was just a guy, a young guy who barely even knew how to look after himself, and there was nothing Jeff could figure out that made him so special.

That was the point of the premonition, though, he guessed. Just to let him know enough to keep him alive, and wait for the rest. Knowing exactly what it was that made Jared so damn important would probably fuck up that importance ever coming to pass.

Tomorrow he'd figure out more - why Jared was here, where was he going, what his ability was, and how Jeff could make him return to the resistance's base with him - but that would wait till the morning.

  


Jeff awoke with a start, surprised even before his eyes opened, because he could sense daylight behind his eyelids. He usually awoke as dawn broke, but as he cracked his eyes open, he could tell the grey light of morning was pervasive enough to mean at least seven AM.

He stretched, almost involuntarily, and groaned in satisfaction when his back clicked.

He scrubbed a hand over his face and turned to find Jared poking at the fire, grinning down at him in an open way he didn't see that often on people these days.

"Morning," he said, voice scratchy, and hauled himself upright. "Sorry I slept in."

Jared shrugged. "You let me crash first, it's only fair. Anyway, even in these end-of-days days, barely past dawn is hardly sleeping in. Looks like you needed it, anyhow."

Jeff wanted to protest, but maybe Jared was right - he certainly felt more rested after what must have been six solid hours sleep, rather than the intermittent snatches he allowed himself on long solo patrols. Maybe it was knowing there was another body there, someone to watch his back, that let him crash into a good night’s sleep; not that he necessarily trusted Jared's survivals skills as far as he could throw the kid, yet.

Jared looked better too, which was the main thing. Jeff bit his lip on a scowl. He just had to protect the guy - didn't mean he had to get protective. But it was good in some way Jeff couldn't articulate to himself to see the healthy color in Jared's cheeks, the shadows less pronounced under his eyes.

He helped Jared stoke up the fire, then set up some bacon and beans cooking; they didn't talk much, but Jeff never spoke a whole lot before breakfast, and Jared looked content enough stirring the beans and puttering around getting his little camping set laid out with plates and knives and forks. Jeff was forcibly reminded of his earliest Cub Scouts expeditions again, the little plastic dinner sets his mom had packed up for him. He smiled.

Jared glanced at him and raised an eyebrow, then focused back on the beans when Jeff gave a little 'eh, nothing' shrug.

They ate quickly, Jeff's back starting to prickle as he woke up fully and started to become aware of how exposed they were out here. He licked sauce from his thumb, then, nearly surprising himself with the question, asked, "What's your ability, Jared?"

"Hmm?" Jared paused in rinsing out the pot he'd been eating from. "Oh. Uh - nothing very exciting." He flicked a glance at Jeff, then firmed his shoulders and reached out to touch his canvas rucksack.

At first, nothing happened; then Jeff saw a dark blue color seeping through the dark green fabric, until quite suddenly the entire rucksack was dark blue.

"Thrilling, right? I'm very powerful and valuable with _that_ ability." He shrugged sheepishly and looked back at Jeff. "I can actually do a bigger range of colors, but I figured a bright fuchsia pack wasn't the best idea. Safety-wise, I mean. I have nothing against pink."

Jeff considered the bag. "Is it just colors?" Most powers he'd seen hadn't been so specific, but then, he knew of people who could control and start fire and of people who had a power over machinery such that they could get cars to follow them around like pets. Maybe color wasn't such a weird thing to be able to control, and not totally without use.

"Yeah. And mostly of synthetic things, or at least things that aren't still growing. I can do cotton, but I can't change mine or others' skin color. Though, weirdly, I can change my own hair color. I think it's because it's technically dead once it's grown out of your scalp. But that's it. And sometimes it doesn't last or bleeds out if it's too different to the original color, in terms of distance on the spectrum or too light to too dark."

"At least you know the limits to your own power. It's those that don't bother to test it out that end up a danger. To themselves and others."

Jared smirked. "You sound like an after school special."

"Jared, you said last night - you thought this would be easy. What did you mean?"

The smirk dropped off Jared's face at the change of subject, and he rubbed a hand through his hair; it fell back over his forehead. "I was - I'm travelling to Texas."

Jeff blinked. "Texas? Kind of a trek from here. You do know there ain't a Greyhound you can hop on."

"Yes, thank you, I might not be all - guns and survival skills like you, but I do know it's not that easy anymore. But I thought - I could walk it." He gave a lopsided, hopeful smile.

"Jared, that would take you--"

"Forever, I know. But I found I had all this free time on my hands."

"You'd've been killed in a week. Would've been killed last night if I hadn't found you. Jared, I'm heading back toward the coast. Come with me."

Jared shook his head. "No. I - no." He started packing up the pots and pans, shaking his fork off into the grass. "I made a choice, which is the first thing I've really done, apart from survive, since I woke up not-dead in the middle of the mass grave formerly known as the Bay area Wal-Mart."

Jeff rolled up his sleep roll and strapped it to his pack. "I get that. I do. But I don't get why Texas."

Jared shrugged, and silently closed up his own pack - it was a pointed silence, and probably the first time since they'd met that Jared hadn't used an opportunity to talk.

It didn't take much coaxing to break it. "Jared."

Jared scowled. "I'm from Texas, okay? I wanted to see if - there was. You know. Maybe my sister, or my mom or dad, or--"

"Jared, come on," said Jeff, explosively. His head was aching, a dull thudding at the base of his skull. "You're kidding me, right? You were risking your life on a months-long exhausting goddamn survival trek just on the off chance you'd find your family still alive somewhere in _Texas_?"

"It was a genetic, thing, right? That's what they're saying. That whatever happened, it got right inside our cells and zipped through our DNA like--" He made a bursting gesture with his hands. "And it killed most people, but some of us - it opened something up. Something in our genome, something hidden. It's genetics. I did AP bio. If it's genetic, there's a really good chance it's linked to families, right?"

Jared looked so hopeful.

"Jared," said Jeff, as he swung his pack onto his shoulders. He started to head back towards the road where Jared had been camping last night, but Jared stayed where he was, chin obstinately pushed out. "Come on. It's to do with DNA, but it's not _genetic_. Not the survival. I haven't met a single person who's known anyone in their family survive. I've known people who lost their whole massive extended family. I've known people lose their identical twin. It's random, Jared. You're not going to find anything in Texas but your family home filled with corpses and chaos across the state that looks exactly like it does in California."

Now that was probably the most Jeff had spoken in one go for as long as he could remember.

"So what if I do go," said Jared in a small voice, but he started walking towards the road. "So what if I do go, and they're all dead. At least I'd have tried."

"Then there'll be nothing for you there, Jared. There'll be no reason."

"There's nothing for me here now!" Jared said angrily, stopping in the low thin grass and turning around, swiping at his bangs. "That's the whole point! I had - god. I know, we all had a life, and it's gone for all of us. But I can't. I can't live like this, drifting around with everyone gone, the people I knew and loved. My friends, my boyfriend, my coworkers - they were everything and they're all gone, and I can't just be alone here. At least I'd be going somewhere and doing something and then, boo fucking hoo, I'd be alone in Texas instead. No fucking different."

Jeff's chest tightened. Yeah, everyone had lost everyone. But that didn't magically make it easier to bear the fact that you'd _lost everyone_. Grief shared worldwide was still grief, and Jared looked like a plant without water - he thrived on social support, a network of people, that much was clear, and he was the kind of person who'd wilt and die alone.

"If you come with me," he said, slowly, "I can give you something back."

Jared frowned. "What?"

Jeff jerked his head in the direction they were walking, and they resumed, Jared shooting a curious sideways look at Jeff.

"People," said Jeff. "A community and a network. You heard of the resistance?"

"You - oh," said Jared. "Yeah. Sort of. I don't know much, though. I've seen enough apocalypse movies to know that if you get involved, you die. I stayed the fuck out of it, until I decided to stroll over to Texas."

Jeff gritted his teeth. "That's the fucking problem," he said. "No-one wants to get the fuck involved, but you know what they're doing in their base in LA?"

" _They_ being?"

"The fuckers who say they're trying to restructure society, but actually are a coalition of the most powerful and corrupt - and hell if those don't go hand in hand, but that's human nature for you - survivors in the state. They want to mark us all in categories, and they want the weaker to serve the stronger. 'It's the new era of evolution,' they say, and survivors who occupy the top levels of their classification system deserve to be at the top of the food chain. Lower classes must be controlled and they must serve. It's barbaric and _centuries_ outdated, and they're getting away with it. Their influence spreads because of propaganda and fear. And because people like you are scared to get involved. They'll involve you whether you like it or not, sooner than you think."

Make that the most he'd said. Maybe Jared's chatter was catching, or maybe he hadn't had to explain this to someone in a while, and since he had last, he'd seen people literally snatched from their beds and taken away screaming, in the name of the coalition's experiments in classification.

Jared was quiet for a long time. "The resistance," he said. "You do realize that you're living out your own cliché of the apocalypse genre? At least tell me Sam Worthington or Christian Bale is the Resistance Leader."

Jeff barked a laugh. "If anyone's our leader, it's Gen, and she's not exactly the Hollywood hero type. But she can set things on fire with her eyes."

"That does trump ripped abs."

They'd reached the road, now, and Jeff's boots made a dull noise on the pavement. He looked at Jared seriously. "If you come with me - I can take you back to the base, and it's not just about getting involved and putting yourself in danger. Being out there on your own is more dangerous, and like I said, they'll find you one way or another. But it's about people. There's a community there, Jared."

Jared twisted his mouth. "It all sounds very heart-warming--"

"And it's what you need. There'd be a place for you, a role, and people who have lost everyone but who can--"

"If you say, _find each other_ , I will check your pockets for a script," warned Jared, but he was facing Jeff fully now, and looked interested.

Jeff shrugged. "I was gonna say help, but I can spout off a few more clichés if it would get you to come with me."

"Why do you care so much? Are you out on some recruitment drive?"

Jeff shook his head. "I'm on solo patrol. It's more keeping an eye out, see what's happening further out from our center and the coalition's center, and seeing if I can spread our word a little bit."

"Oh god, you do realize you sound like a missionary?"

Jeff grins, sharp. "God ain't got nothing to do with it. You coming with? Come on. It'll be fun."

Fun. Right. Jared cast a look back south-east, where the road veered and grass and greenery broke through it more strongly. Somewhere out there lay a lone path for Jared, Nevada through Arizona through New Mexico and into Texas, paths of danger and death and further, further from Jeff.

Then he looked back at Jeff. He shrugged. "I'll give it a shot."

That would do for now. It was only then that the buzzing Jeff hadn't noticed getting stronger in the back of his head quietened, like his ability was now nagging at him to keep Jared with him, close and safe. That was going to a pain. The slackening of it was nearly euphoric, though, his headache disappearing with a warm rush, and he reined in his smile as he nodded at Jared. "Good. Let's head back."

  


Jeff was squinting into the morning sun; it highlighted his warm brown eyes and the fan of creases at the corners of them. Jared wanted to make a quip about why he wasn't wearing sunglasses, because seriously, it would complete the whole look, but bit his tongue. He hadn't yet got a handle on the guy. Jared teased people like breathing but got the feeling that if he went too far with Jeff he'd get a look that would wither him worse than his father's glares used to.

Jeff had two guns holstered at his hips, a rifle slung alongside his pack, and Jared had noticed a knife in an ankle holster. He looked almost comical until you remembered he wasn't dressed up like a movie star, he was wearing all that shit for real. He planned to kill people with those guns, not just to look cool. Had killed people, in fact, right in front of Jared.

It was moments like this that Jared realized all over again that this shit was really, truly fucking happening. He had a couple of those a week. He ran a finger down his shirt, left a lime green streak, just to remind himself. It faded quickly, and he scowled.

He looked over at Jeff again. The guy managed to unsettle him and calm him in equal measures; it was weirding Jared out, and he still hadn't figured out exactly how Jeff had convinced him to come back with him. The morning he'd woken up - in the spare room of a house that smelled the least bad on the street, only one corpse, in the downstairs room - and decided he was getting out, he was going home, had been the best he'd felt since the Wal-Mart day. Which was how he thought of it, which was dumb because it wouldn't mean anything to anyone else - unless they'd also survived in a Wal-Mart, which he thought was pretty unlikely. Though there had to be a few people out there.

Anyway. The decision had wiped some of the heavy fog from his mind, and he'd been so determined, so focused; and here he was heading back, deeper into California and further from home, just because this goddamn-for-serious _resistance fighter_ had given him some big speech.

"Penny for 'em," said Jeff, gruffly, like he said everything.

Jared shrugged, feeling too-hot and somewhat sulky. "Just thinking you should've been a politician in your past life." Then he thought. "What were you, anyway?"

"In my past life?"

"Yeah."

Jeff thought for a moment, like he was trying to remember - which was ridiculous, it wasn't even a year ago, but Jared found himself doing the same, sometimes. Trying desperately to remind himself of what Aldis looked like, or the sound of Sandy's laugh. It felt like - well. A different life.

"I was a lawyer," Jeff said, voice tinged with amusement.

Jared laughed. "Oh god, that makes sense."

Jeff looked at him. "How does that make sense?" He gestured at himself. "I've gone from ties and business lunches to guns and freedom fighting. I'm way too badass for anyone to think _laywer_."

"Okay, one, you just just took away two of your own badass points by calling yourself that. Two, you are so a lawyer. Guns aside, you just silvertongued me into coming back with you, even though I met you last night and have been actively avoiding anything to do with the resistance or bad guys or good guys or what-the-fuck-ever, ever since I realized the world had gone to shit."

Jeff laughed. "Okay, okay, fair point. I wasn't just silvertonguing you, though," - and it was way inappropriate for part of Jared's long-dormant libido to perk up at how that sounded. "I did mean it. I promise this will be good for you. It was for me."

"Yeah, but you apparently had latent freedom-fighter urges. Not all of us have been secretly longing to be our very own apocalyptic superhero figure."

Jeff shrugged. "Maybe so. All I mean is, it's a purpose. It's surprising how much we need a purpose. Reason to get up in the morning, yadda yadda."

"Where were you?" asked Jared, surprising himself a little with the question. "I mean. When it happened."

Jeff was silent for a long time, and Jared thought - shit. Of course you aren't supposed to ask people that. It's even worse than asking about what their Thing is.

Then Jeff shrugged, too-casual. "Exactly the way you'd imagine a freedom fighter would be made, if this were a Hollywood movie like you keep insisting. My seven year old niece's dance recital."

Jared sucked in a breath. "Shit. I'm sorry."

"It's not like there's a good place for it to happen. But. Yeah. Fucked me up, I reckon, but that's not news these days. Only survivors in the hall were me and a six year old boy."

"Holy crap," said Jared. "There are kids? I didn't know of any kids surviving."

"There aren't many," said Jeff with a nod. "But a couple, and if they've got a powerful ability it can be a bitch. I didn't know what was going on - he was crying and I was freaking the fuck out and there were just - dead kids and parents everywhere, and then stuff started flying around the room, because of the kid manifesting hard. Chairs, bodies - god." He shook his head. "Sorry. Yeah. I got him out of there, and there was someone else on the street - Danni. She and I stuck together for a while, with Kieran, tried to figure it all out." He shook his head. "Not a time in my life I wanna revisit, but Danni and I are tight still. She and Kieran are both back at the base."

Jared licked his lips. "In a way I'm jealous," he said. "I didn't find anyone alive for a week. I know there must have been people near me - but I guess I hid, for a while. Went home and stayed in my apartment for four days. I think I nearly snapped - like, mentally. Then I started wandering when I got hungry - basic urges, man, thank god for 'em - and, well. Started surviving."

"This is a depressing conversation," said Jeff. "I know it's a depressing world, but Christ."

Jared shook his head, feeling like he was trying to shake off the memories of those first few weeks. "Tell me about it."

"You started it!"

"Yeah, shut up. Tell me something exciting."

Jeff hummed. "From the resistance base, the main house, you can see the ocean. It's not very nice if you go right down to the beach - sewage and garbage, you know how it goes - but we get a view of the ocean and from where we are, it looks like it used to."

"That's--" Jared considered. "Pretty depressing, but an improvement. I wouldn't class it as exciting, though."

Jeff opened his mouth with a look on his face as though he was about to impart some great wisdom - or maybe tell Jared to fuck off and come up with something better - when the faint sound of distant buzzing carried on a movement of the air.

Buzzing itself wasn't that rare a sound to Jared - god, he mostly ignored it, because in a world stuffed full of corpses, not to put too fine a point on it, clouds of flies weren't a rare sight. That was the first thing he thought - that same slightly sick, resigned feeling and a knowledge to avoid the sound.

But Jeff had gone still in the middle of the road, head cocked like a dog, mouth slightly open.

"Shit," he said. "Bikers."

The sick feeling in Jared's belly sharpened into a spike of fear. He'd never seen a biker gang - in the _modern_ sense, of course - but he'd heard of them. Wild teams of somehow deranged survivors all with mechanical-field abilities, whether a preternatural ability to understand, fix and create working machines and engines, or the creepier ones who could _control_ them, an apparently psychic animating link with hunks of dead metal.

Maybe not so dead, at the heart of it. Everything else Jared had thought had been turned on its head one afternoon last year, so why not that?

Not all mechanical-field survivors were bikers, but all bikers had those sorts of abilities. They created massive, sometimes nearly grotesque-looking vehicles - hybrids between cars, bikes and tanks - out of scrap and abandoned vehicles, and ripped through the streets causing aimless chaos, fear and death.

No-one really knew why - as far as Jared was aware, anyway. Why so many survivors with those sorts of abilities had become - _off_ , reckless and violent, had fallen together and decided to do what they did. Survivors banded together geographically, but the bikers were the only ones whose abilities were the unifying factor. Without exception, they were people to be scared of.

He'd met a guy in a hardware store once who'd been arming himself to the teeth. Wild-eyed, he'd theorized to Jared that having a psychic link with machinery turned you insane, your own telepathy bouncing back off of metal like an echo chamber of psychic waves; but Jared had no clue if there was anything to that. Hell, maybe it was the genome thing. Proximity to parts that caused psychopathy if agitated.

The buzzing was louder, now, and yeah - that wasn't flies.

"Holy--" started Jared, but Jeff was hooking an arm around his waist and bodily dragging him to the side of the road.

Moments later, a massive bike, styled like a Harley but huger, with enormous, thick wheels that looked like they'd belong on an eighteen-wheeler roared by. A guy with tangled dark hair was perched on the top, howling. At first Jared prayed that maybe he'd just keep going, zip down the road and leave them shrinking in his rearview - assuming he had one - but Jared's luck had apparently run out at surviving in that Wal-Mart. He saw a flash of pale eyes as the guy whipped his head to stare at them as he roared past, and seconds later, the massive bike began to swerve, preparing to circle around in a dizzying wide loop, tipping onto its side impossibly, but of course it'd never tip all the way over. At the same time, another bike could be seen in pursuit of the first, getting closer.

"Shit," said Jeff, and pushed Jared hard on the shoulder so he stumbled and fell down in the low grass on the shoulder of the road. "Stay there!" he barked. Then he unslung his rifle.

He swung it up onto his shoulder, swift and confident; he absorbed the kickback so smoothly and invisibly that Jared was startled by the sudden report. He heard the tinkle of the shell on the tarmac, and Jeff cursing under his breath, even as the bike's engine screamed loudly back towards them, then the report again, and the guy was toppling, falling off his seat atop the behemoth of a bike. He was no longer a threat - but the bike was still coming right for them

We killed its master, thought Jared dumbly; we just made it mad.

Then Jeff was coming right at him, again, and grabbing him bodily - again - and tugging the both of them a couple of stumbling feet backwards, until the ground disappeared beneath Jared's feet. With a lurch of his belly, they fell together backwards into a ditch that ran parallel to the road.

Jared landed with a thump on his back, legs awkwardly propped against the sloped wall of the ditch, his breathlessness compounded by Jeff's solid weight landing on top of him. Over Jeff's shoulder he stared up blankly into the blue sky, chest seized tight; he heard the bike approaching, heard it thump off the edge of the road, and soar over the ditch, shooting off into the fields that stretched beyond them.

"It might be semi-sentient," said Jeff, struggling up, bracing himself on his elbows over Jared, "but it's still a hunk of metal. It's pretty dumb. We got some leeway while it zooms around the field for a while, trying to figure out where we've gone; plus we killed its master so his psychic link is seeping out. It'll be just a shitty mongrel bike again in a moment."

He was grinning down at Jared like this was all so much fun.

You're insane, Jared wanted to say, but he coughed feebly in Jeff's face instead.

Jeff jumped to his feet and pulled Jared up, too, frowning at his lack of breathing, and thumped him on the back, which was completely unhelpful.

Wheezing, Jared crawled up out of the ditch and sat down on the side of the road, getting his breath back. Jeff scrambled out next to him, way too spry for someone who'd just been falling into ditches.

"Hey," said Jared, once he could speak again. "Where did the other--"

His cut-off question was answered as Jared's world flipped into a roaring chaos of noise, speed and wind; his body reacted hard, clinging to the thing he was pressed against, and it took him a second to figure out he'd been snatched up from the side of the road by the other biker who'd circled back to them. The guy on top of the bike had one wiry arm cinched right around Jared's chest, under his armpits, and Jared couldn't stop his instinct to cling back to the guy and the bike, as repulsive as he found it. The guy reeked of layers of old sweat and the rich grime of motor oil caked on.

He was screaming into the wind like everything was hilarious, and Jared's hair whipped against his face, stinging his cheek. He didn't know what he should do apart from cling on, sure down to his gut - in a way he abruptly realized he hadn't been sure before - that he did not want to die, but sharply aware it wasn't really in his hands right now.

The guy moved, and Jared nearly bit through his lip in both fear and the desire to not let the guy see how scared he was. He was just being dragged closer to the guy's face; Jared clung onto what he could reach, some of the bike, the guy's stained t-shirt, his foot scrabbling for a hold.

"That'll teach you to kill us!" he screamed, spittle landing on Jared's face and his breath sour; his arm tensed around Jared's waist and Jared knew, then - fuck, maybe he'd picked up Jeff's premonition - that he was preparing to throw Jared off the bike. At this speed, he probably wouldn't survive the fall.

Through the roaring wind in his ears and the growling of the bike's engine, Jared picked up the sound of another bike coming up behind them.

The biker did too and he whipped his head back to look. The smile fell off his face at the same Jared heard Jeff yell, "Jared, hold on!"

Crack of a rifle again, and the arm around Jared went slack, the biker slumping forward then listing to the side. Jared reacted instinctively as the biker slid off completely and fell to the ground, snatched away in a tumbling broken mess by the concrete rushing underneath them. Jared clawed at the bike until he had two hands grabbing the far side of the seat, head hanging over the side, and feet braced in the ridges of the metal plates above the wheels.

He wasn't going to be able to hold on long; his fingers ached and his feet were starting to slip, jarred out of their toe-holds by the juddering of the bike as it started to slow and swerve, sensing the loss of its owner.

"Jared!"

Jared craned his head up - Jeff was coming up alongside, riding - shit, riding the bike that had come after them.

"Give me your hand!"

The side of Jeff's bike bumped the one Jared was clinging to with a squeal of metal and a bright flash of sparks as steel plates glanced off each other, and Jared's bike jerked badly, dislodging his feet - but he had a hand in Jeff's, Jeff's strong fingers clamped around his forearm and his palm braced on Jared's wrist. Jared wrapped his own fingers around Jeff's arm and scrabbled his feet, and somehow, he got over his bike and onto Jeff's. Using the leverage of pushing off the other bike, and Jeff's strong tug, he swung around and seated himself astride Jeff's bike, behind Jeff.

The riderless bike careened off, picking up speed then circling and going past them again in the opposite direction.

"Back to the rest of 'em, I'm guessing," said Jeff grimly, his words almost entirely swallowed up by the wind as they hurtled on. Jared didn't even know how Jeff was riding this - there weren't any obvious control or even handlebars. Jeff had his hands wound firmly around some spurs of metal and Jared had his arms wound firmly around Jeff's middle.

"You're fucking crazy!" he yelled into Jeff's ear. "How are you controlling this?"

Jeff twisted his head. "Luck and brute strength!" he said, and Jared could see he was grinning, the dimple creased in his cheek.

"You're crazy!" Jared repeated and tightened his grip. His thighs were braced around Jeff's, and he could feel how tightly Jeff was clenching on to the bike; his thighs were tense and rock hard where Jared pressed in with his own. Jeff smelled so much better than the biker - warm, as clean as anyone could be these days, and almost spicy with fresh sweat. His shoulders were broad and strong against Jared's chest, and - Jared scolded himself. Adrenaline and being pressed up against a hot guy on a bike were excuses, but really, this was a life or death situation, not a fantasy.

"What now?" he yelled.

"I dunno," said Jeff. "I can't stop this thing, I just gotta wait for its power to die. Shouldn't be long--"

As if on cue, the bike started to cough and jerk underneath them, slowing down.

"Shit," said Jared, and craned his head to look over his shoulder. Far in the distance, he could see black spots on the road - the rest of the gang, and they weren't gonna be happy. Near-psychotic they might all be, but no-one was gonna take kindly to two of their group being killed. "We got to get off this thing, and hide."

They were passing a construction site on the side of the road, the beginning of a concrete and wood skeleton of an apartment complex, with a large pile of orange sand next to a pile of timber, and a couple of half eaten, ragged corpses in yellow hard hats visible in the tall grass.

Jeff grunted and banked his body hard to the left; the bike jerked and whined, then went with him, stuttering across the median and the opposite lane, bouncing over the shoulder and into the site. Whether through luck or judgement, it plowed into the large pile of sand. The bike had lost a lot of its speed, plus the sand had some give, and the impact jarred them both hard but they stayed put, Jared's forehead pressed to the back of Jeff's neck. Jared stayed still a moment, panting, body thrumming with fear and the adrenaline of doing _fucking insane things_ like hijacking a biker's vehicle and driving off on it, pursued by the rest of the gang.

"Come on," said Jeff, levering himself up and out of the seat, climbing forward on the slope of the sand pile and sliding down the shifting grit to the floor, beckoning Jared to follow him "We don't have long." Jeff looked anxiously back at the road once they were both on solid ground.

"Thank you," said Jared, feeling awkward.

"Huh?"

"For saving my life. Uh, again."

Jeff flashed him a smile. "Do I earn back the two badass points I lost?"

"You can have _three_ ," said Jared, emphatically. "That was amazing."

Jeff smirked. "Stealing bikes, saving lives, all in a day's work. Maybe one day you'll repay the favor."

Jared laughed, but it was hollow. "Sure."

The sound of the engines heightened, and they looked at each other, then glanced around the construction site.

"Where should we hide?" asked Jared, somewhat desperately - it was open and unprotected, and if they hid behind a wall or inside the truck - oh god, bad idea with these guys - they'd get spotted fast.

Jeff was rubbing a hand over his jaw, frowning. "I don't--"

Jared had a brainwave, then, the kind borne of the fact there were only seconds left to have one. "Uh," he said. "This might not work, but. How long can you hold your breath?"

"Excuse me?"

Jared pointed at the sand pile, vividly remembering his brother burying him when they were kids at the beach. "Hold our breath, burrow into that, cover ourselves with sand, they won't see us--"

Jeff headed straight for the sand and started digging out a hollow near the bottom. Sand started sliding down immediately to fill the gaps, but the point really was to make it loose enough for them to burrow in, crouch small and let the sand slide down to cover them. Jared fell to his knees and started pawing out scoops of sand, and they dug their way in, cursing and spitting as the sand started falling down in rivers on top of them from higher up. As the engines grew louder, they exchanged a glance then closed their eyes tight and bodily ground their way into the loosened sand, wriggling to let it fall and cover them as they crouched at the bottom.

Jared could hear Jeff grunting next to him, then felt him tug at Jared to come in closer to him, then stilled. It felt - Jared hoped - like he was covered, everything up to his feet hidden by the fall of sand above them; he was crouched in a ball, trying to cage in a space under his bowed head to keep a pocket of air to breathe.

"Here," he whispered, muffled by his hand protecting his mouth, and reached his other hand out to grip onto Jeff's knee. He forced that new part of his mind, the ache like tugging a sore muscle, and felt the odd shifting release as he knew his power had turned both their clothes and hair the same color as the sand.

Faintly, outside the coating of sand, he could hear engines growling and the shouts of the bikers discovering the abandoned bike on the other side of the heap; he could sense Jeff next to him, his knee pressed to Jared's thigh, a point of warmth in the cold gritty weight of the sand.

His head was pounding, chest tight with the breaths he so desperately wanted to take, only allowing himself tiny sips of air and resisting the urge to spit out the sand that got in his mouth. He didn't know how long they stayed crouched there - he couldn't hear anything but his own heartbeat after a while - but just as he thought he couldn't bear it a second longer, he felt Jeff move. They struggled back out, bursting free from the heap they'd caused at the base of the large pile, spitting and cursing and sucking in great clean gulps of air.

Jared shook his head hard, wiped as much sand as he could from his face before opening his eyes to check: the site was again deserted.

"Holy shit," he said, coughing and spitting out clumps of sand from his mouth. "God, that was an awful idea."

Jeff shook himself like a dog, sand flying everywhere, looking very off with his sandy-colored hair and clothes as well as the covering of real sand. He frowned and rolled his shoulders. "It was fucking genius. Though I'm going to be finding sand everywhere for days. This is why people always said don't have sex on a beach, but worse."

"We kept our clothes on," pointed out Jared.

"Didn't stop it getting everywhere," said Jeff. "Tell me I'm wrong."

Jared shifted and tried really hard not to think about the sand that had been trickling down the back of his pants. "Maybe." He roughed his hands quickly through his hair, sloughing out a shower of sand. "Aw, hell."

Jeff laughed, then, looking at Jared. "Oh man, you do not suit orange hair. Change us back, chameleon boy."

"That's a terrible superhero name," said Jared thoughtfully as he loped over and grabbed Jeff's arm, closed his eyes and pushed until the sand color drained from their hair and clothes.

"Oh, like you're the superhero," said Jeff dismissively. "Sidekick, for sure."

"To what - Unreliable Maybe Sometimes Premonition Man? We'd never get a comic book."

"And certainly not a movie." Jeff grinned, then headed back over to the road, shaking more sand free from his clothes as he went, and looked in either direction. The bike they'd stolen had also gone; there was just the loose shape of it left in the sand.

He waved back at Jared. "I think we're safe now. They'll move on to something more exciting."

"Thank god," said Jared with relief. He shook his head. "I knew this was a bad idea." He softened it with a grin, though, and truth was, he didn't feel pissed at Jeff, or scared, or angry that he'd nearly been killed after agreeing to go on this stupid trip. Like he would have thought he'd felt, if he'd known that agreeing to go with Jeff would put them both in mortal goddamn danger. His heart was pounding, but his mind felt bright and sharp and _good_ , and he felt more alive than he had in a long while.

Maybe it was the adrenaline rush; but maybe it was just doing something, and doing it with someone, and the rush of surviving.

Jared shook his head, and winced when it sent a fresh wave of sand tickling down his back. "This sand situation is not good."

Jeff laughed. "Better than death by biker." He rolled his shoulders again. "But yeah. Point taken."

He walked past Jared, scanning the site, then headed purposefully towards the skeleton of the building that had been left unfinished, and behind it to where a large blue open-top dumpster stood empty. Jared watched Jeff grab the edge and lift himself up enough to peer over, then made a triumphant noise. He dropped back down to the grass and started unslinging his rifle, taking off his hip holster, and stripping off his jacket and sweater.

"Uh--" said Jared.

Jeff waved him over. "There's a decent depth of rainwater in here, and it was empty so the water's pretty clear. Wanna get clean?"

Now that was a great idea. Jared headed over to the dumpster, shrugging off his jacket as he went, and shook it upside down when he reached Jeff. Sand poured from the pockets.

Jeff was shirtless now, working on his belt, and Jared firmly stared ahead at the side of the dumpster as he stripped off his own clothes.

He hesitated when he got down to his boxers, glancing to the side to see Jeff skim his own boxers down his hips without a pause, and Jared honestly really could not help staring at his ass. Toned, firm, but with enough curve to give a good handful. He tore his eyes away as Jeff clambered up the side of the dumpster and jumped in, landing with a splash and a hiss.

"Water's cold, but good!" he said, and Jared took a deep breath, tugged off his boxers, wincing at the sand that followed, and went in after Jeff.

However good Jeff looked naked, Jared didn't have to worry about inappropriate reactions, because even with the warmth of the day, the rainwater collected about waist-high in the dumpster and was sharply cold; his body tightened with goosebumps and his balls felt like they wanted to hide inside his body.

"Holy shit," he gasped, then jumped when Jeff laughed and drove his arm into the water, splashing a wave into Jared's face.

"Pussy," he said. "Water's fine." He dunked his head under and came up with a gasp, his hair gone dark and sleekly plastered to his head, eyes shut tight, the hair on his chest wetted down and looking soft.

Jared closed his eyes and sank down under the water himself.

The cold shocked his chest, but once he'd gotten used to it, it felt glorious; he hadn't bathed properly in a week or so, making do with what water he could find on his face and hair, and he felt lighter and cleaner at once; not to mention relaxing into the relief of the itchy layers of sand floating off. He scrubbed his hands through his hair, groaning in pleasure, bubbles escaping from his mouth at the feeling of the water soaking through to his scalp and the maddening itch of the sand shaking free.

He braced his feet on the bottom and pushed back up out of the water at speed, laughing as he broke the surface and shoved a wave of water into Jeff's face.

Jeff spluttered and stumbled backwards. "I save your life, and this is the thanks I get?" he said indignantly, and Jared dropped his hands under the surface of the water and looked meek and apologetic until Jeff had stopped protecting his own face, then hefted a double handful of water right in his face again.

"Fucking - brat!" Jeff roared, and launched himself at Jared, who barked a surprised laugh and tried to dive out of the way, but Jeff got him and tried to dunk him.

The dumpster wasn't large enough for the sort of horsing around Jared was used to with siblings in actual pools, so their knees and elbows knocked with hollow thunks against the sides of the dumpster; but the main concern was the feel of Jeff's slippery skin sliding over his own as he trapped Jared in a headlock, ducking him under the water. Jared could feel the hard length of his thighs braced against the back of his own, and the strength of his arms holding Jared in place; the ridge of his hipbones and the soft scratchy feel of coarse hair against Jared's ass.

"Uncle!" Jared cried frantically, wanting very badly for Jeff to let go and also keep holding on at the same time. "Uncle!"

Jeff laughed, dunked Jared triumphantly one last time, then let go.

Jared stayed crouched down, laughed weakly, and dropped his head back into the water, rinsing it one last time.

Funny how these days, mostly-clear rainwater seemed heavenly, safe and clean, even in a rust-edged dumpster.

"You're an overgrown child," he directed at Jeff, who was sluicing water over his arms.

Jeff smirked. "And you're a sore loser. Clean yet?"

The water felt lovely now that Jared's skin had acclimated, and he didn't want to get out, wanted to wallow like he had in hot baths in his past life, but he sighed. "Yeah, guess so. Man, it feels good to get clean."

"So I've convinced you to come with me, survived near-certain death, ended up profiting one badass point, _and_ scored a bath? I call today a good day."

Jared was only a little surprised to agree.

  


"So how long is the trip going to take us?" asked Jared as they kept on walking, heading now through the main street of a fairly small town and keeping an eye out for people. Not everyone you might meet was friendly, and Jared mostly wanted to just get where they were going, but Jeff, for all he'd denied it to Jared, was out spreading the 'word' of the resistance and almost certainly trying to recruit people to go back with him. Jared probably wasn't quite as special as he felt right now, but hey, a guy saves your life twice in less than twenty-four hours, it gives you a bit of an ego boost.

Jeff made a thoughtful noise. "Another week, maybe? It took me about two weeks of patrol from leaving the base to get to where I found you, but I was weaving in and out of towns and urban areas, and it was exploratory, not directional, so of course it's slower. We're going direct and the purpose is to get there. So yeah - a week. Could be less, eight days at most. They'll be surprised to see me, especially since I busted my radio a few days out."

"When were they expecting you back?"

Jeff shot him a look. "Not for a month, probably. It was a pretty big area Danni and I had mapped out for me to cover, right up to the state border."

Jared frowned. "So you cut your whole patrol weeks short just to take me back to base? Couldn't you have just told me about it and sent me off? I mean, I know you saved my life and don't want to see it go to waste and all, but I'm just one guy."

Jeff looked ahead and seemed avoidant. "I just - like I said. I wanted to see it through. I think it's the right place for you. And you already proved you woulda died out on your own, so I don't know why you're complaining."

Jared laughed. "Believe me, no complaining here. It's just - I'm a little surprised. You really don't gotta piss off your - your bosses, or whatever, just to make sure I don't trip and kill myself."

Jeff shrugged one shoulder. "It's not exactly the military, Jared. They'll be pleased to see me back earlier - least, those who I call my friends - and if I say I had a good reason, they won't question it."

Jared had never really thought of himself as a good reason for anything or anyone before, and it made his chest feel warm.

He'd been loved, he knew that, but he'd always felt he was valued for being _fun_. Life and soul of the party, the guy everyone knew - even his boyfriend had always told people he loved how much of a partier Jared was and how much fun they had together. They rarely had nights in, even though Jared had grown up seeing the quietly romantic domesticity of his parents and secretly craved it.

And yeah - he knew it wasn't exactly some great tragedy; poor little popular kid. And he knew he'd played into it, because he liked people liking him and it wasn't exactly hard to be liked for being fun.

But this felt new. Like he was important - like his life was being valued just for being _his_. It was nice; and probably miles from how much of a shit Jeff actually gave, given that all else aside he'd only known Jared one day. But it was nice.

"Well," he said. "Here's hoping I don't make you regret it." He grinned, meaning to make a joke of it, but it felt like the smile came out a little crooked, and Jeff's eyes turned warm when he glanced back at Jared.

"Doubt it, kiddo," he said.

They crossed a freeway, walking through a large intersection and clambering around the mess of smashed and toppled cars, carefully not looking inside the windows because these were little hotboxes which made for messy corpses.

There were signs of life as they walked along the front of a strip mall - evidence of rigged up shelters, remains of fires, and marks of individuality in some of the hangings of the shelter walls, like there was a mini community set up along the paved area that lay in front of the stores. Made sense - built-in defensible space in the stores, shelter, varied range of supplies, and if a community built up here and by their presence de facto owned the mall and land, they could build defense and bargain and trade with anyone passing by who wanted things from the stores.

There were no people in sight, though; just the signs of their life. Jeff frowned and looked around, warned Jared in a low voice that it didn't mean they weren't there; they were probably hiding and waiting to see if the two of them acted aggressively or not before making a decision. Jeff put both his hands up, palm out, and got Jared to do the same, and they walked the length of the mall uninterrupted.

"Should we try and stock up?" said Jared, eyeing a grocery store whose shelves were mostly, but not totally, ransacked, but Jeff shook his head. "We've got enough for a few days. We'll find somewhere else - not worth it here."

Jared shrugged, and they passed the mall, stepped back onto the road and kept walking. Everywhere remained deserted, but the hairs on the back of Jared's neck rose hard, and he felt - somewhere deeper than instinct, maybe in the place that housed his abilities, maybe sensing theirs working on him - that at least five people were watching them pass by.

He let out a long breath when they were a few hundred yards away. "That was creepy," he said.

"Leave them alone, they'll leave you alone, a lot of places like that," said Jeff. "They're not a danger, but they can be if you try too hard to get them to budge. I've had some civil exchanges, and some - well. Let's just say that a lot of groups who've settled in like that don't like me telling them about big scary stuff like the coalition and the resistance. Nearly lost my eyebrows to a pyrokinetic community leader who did not want to hear it."

He grinned, then it slipped. "This is what I was talking about, Jared. These people, these communities - the coalition are spreading out in ever-bigger circles from LA. They're picking people off the streets, they're plain old killing people they think of as high level classifications but aren’t agreeable to their vision. Did you know they have people who can fly? People who can hold you tight without rope; people who are so psychically powerful they can make people docile with a blink; can make people _kill themselves_ with a thought? And all these little communities that don't want to get involved are gonna get annihilated."

"People don't wanna believe that, though," said Jared. "They think - oh, it won't happen to us. Or - how does he know? He's just trying to scare us. He just wants to control us, he's worse than them, at least we've never seen them do anything bad. People will go to any lengths to convince themselves that things aren't as bad as people say it is, until it's too late and we're in the middle of a worldwide emergency fuel shortage because, oh look! We're running out of fossil fuels like everyone's been saying for decades and decades and everyone ignored them or thought a couple wind farms as a gesture towards natural energy would solve the problem! Uh," he added hastily, "not that that's really a problem, anymore. I may have studied environmental science at college."

"Get your point, though," said Jeff, rubbing a hand over his face as though to hide the smile that had crept up as Jared had ranted about fossil fuels. "And by the time they realize yeah, things are as bad as I said they are, they're being - slaughtered, or carried out to what's basically a mix between a slave camp and an experimental lab."

Jeff stopped himself, and shook his head irritably. "Anyway. Sorry. You've already heard the speech." He glanced sideways at Jared. "Environmental science? Really? That's very worthwhile of you." He grinned. "I'm imagining you at a protest, wearing a billboard and shouting angry slogans. It's cute."

"Oh, fuck you," said Jared amiably. "It was the easiest major and actually pretty interesting, plus it had the hottest professors."

Jeff raised his eyebrows in mock outrage. "And you said you had a boyfriend! How did he feel about you perving on your teachers?"

"Oh, he didn't mind," said Jared, his tone airy. "He was one of them."

"What?"

"Well, my TA. Slightly less scandalous. But still."

Jeff snorted. "Something tells me he had his hands full with you."

"We had fun," said Jared with a grin that he mostly felt.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. He had a really big -- heart." Jared flashed a filthy smile, and Jeff laughed again, rubbed a hand over his face. Jared smirked, trying to figure out if the tips of Jeff's ears had gone red or if it was just him catching the sun, then rolled his eyes at himself.

"What about you?" he said, then, when Jeff raised an eyebrow, quickly clarified. "Did you - have someone? "

Jeff shook his head. "No. Weird that I feel lucky, isn't it? Lost my friends and family, at least I didn't lose a love. You know? I'd broken up with my partner about a year beforehand and was just starting thinking about dating again. Signed up for one of those terrible dating websites the morning of." He laughed humorlessly.

Jared's ears pricked at the use of the word _partner_ , but he didn't ask. He was being dumb, anyway; a crush on the hot older guy who'd saved his life was pretty inevitable, so he'd just have to ride it out. Jeff, even if he wasn't as straight as his whole Hollywood-hero persona might suggest, wasn't going to be interested in a kid like Jared, and for all the movies about end-of-the-world scenarios that all boiled down to a romance like that was the most important thing, in reality it would be a really bad idea. Like anyone needed an extra weak spot in this world these days. Especially Jeff. Jared didn't think relationships with random rescued pups would figure into the plans of a front-line resistance soldier.

And he was getting way ahead of himself. "Sucks about the breakup," he said lightly, "but I take your point about it being one less connection to lose, when the time came."

The sun was setting ahead of them, throwing orange light in low rays toward them. Jeff stopped walking and shaded his eyes against the glare, looking around. They were somewhere between towns, unremarkable concrete and warehouses to one side of the road and brown scrubby grass stretching to the other until a bank of trees rose up.

Jeff pointed toward the treeline. "Let's settle for the night. Don't know about you, but my old legs could do with a rest."

Jared's own legs were feeling tight and sore after the events of that morning and a day's walking on top of that, and he had no doubt Jeff was perfectly fit and could have kept on walking all night. But he decided to take the out gracefully, because sitting down sounded pretty great about now.

He sighed. "Well, I don't know, I could probably go a few more days without a break, being a fine specimen of a healthy young man, and all, but I understand it's more difficult for you in your advanced age. Gotta look after your ticker, am I right?"

"Absolutely," agreed Jeff solemnly. "I need regular naps, and I'm thinking of acquiring myself a walker. Gotta be a bunch of grandpas somewhere that don't need them any more."

They clambered over the low hedge along the side of the road, and headed towards the line of trees, the sky growing darker above them as evening came on. The shaded place inside the trees looked a little alarming, but Jared trusted Jeff to pick the safest spot for them. He did want to ask if they could find a residential area and hijack a couple of beds, but not everyone was happy doing that. Plus Jared had spent ages picking out the best sleeping bag he could find at the sporting goods store, it was good he was getting a chance to use it, right? Right.

Jeff put his pack down with a grunt when they'd reached a spot a few yards into the treeline that he apparently deemed acceptable. It was sheltered, but the trees were sparse enough there was space for them.

"God." Jared groaned as he loosed his own pack from his shoulders and dropped it down onto the ground. He followed it with a loud huff. " _God_."

Sitting down seemed to alert his body to all the places where it had been banged up that morning and walked on all day, and he followed his own momentum to lie flat on his back, arms splayed out, grunting as his back cracked. His calves ached, and bruises on both his shins beat a painful throbbing pulse. A graze along his forearm that he hadn't even noticed suddenly started to sting.

"Jesus Christ," he said, muffled into where he'd flung his arm over his face. "You saved my life just to kill me bit by bit."

Jeff laughed, and clapped a hand on Jared's leg, right over the bruise. Jared flinched and protested with a moan.

"Joking aside," said Jeff, and Jared peered at him from under his arm. "You okay? Tell me if I'm going too fast or hard for you--"

Jared groaned again and hid back under his arm, trying hard not to take that the other way.

"--'cause I know I can set a hell of a pace. We're making good time, so don't be all stoic and then collapse on me."

"Mrrr," said Jared.

"Alright," said Jeff, sounding amused. "You let me know when the words have come back, and then you can help me make dinner."

"Oh, god, food," said Jared, and struggled back upright. Food wasn't as exciting these days as it had been in the time when you could just order a pizza, but he'd always liked to eat, and his stomach was growling. "I'm up, I'm up. What do we have?"

"Tonight, your gourmet meal is--" said Jeff, distractedly, rooting around in his pack. "Ah! Chicken flavored ramen, three strips of jerky, and two bags of Raisinets for today's chef's special dessert."

"Oh, nice," said Jared, approvingly. "Raisinets? You spoil me."

"Only the best for you, monsieur. I hope you enjoy your dining experience here at Chez Morgan. Half price off your next visit if you post a positive review online."

"Oh, certainly," said Jared. "My absolute compliments to the chef." He chucked his second-to-last bottle of water at Jeff for the pot, and dug out plates.

Once the fire was lit and the noodles bubbling away, Jared leaned back on his elbows and looked out at the expanse of the grass, the faint strip of the road he could see through the dark, and the impenetrable blackness beyond that.

The electricity had gone out only a few weeks after the event, and by now Jared was used to how completely dark it got at night, and how bright the stars were without miles upon miles of urban light pollution. It was one of the few good things about life this side of the event; he could really and truly see the constellations he'd learned about as a kid, peering up through his telescope from his suburban Dallas home.

Jeff's voice was low and soft. "Nice to see the stars, sometimes. Ignoring the other crap."

"Read my mind, man. My ten year old self would have peed himself getting to see 'em so clearly. My dad never took me out far enough to really see them clear."

Jeff laughed. "Oh god, you were a nerdy kid, weren't you."

"Hey, I'll have you know, I was the top of my Little League baseball team."

"That don't mean you weren't a nerd."

"Fair point."

Jared dropped down onto one elbow, letting himself look at Jeff across the campfire, the way the warm flickering orange light made shadows dance across his face, made him look - mysterious and sinister and gorgeous. Jared bit his lip.

Jeff stirred the noodles, tasted one with such a look of concentration that the spell was broken somewhat, and Jared snorted a laugh. "Alright, you're living this chef thing a little too seriously," he said, and Jeff grinned up at him. It had such an effect on his face, split it into something so warm and welcoming, those white teeth and deeply cut dimples.

"Ah, screw you. I can work miracles with ramen."

"Sure," said Jared, humoring him, though when Jeff slopped the noodles into the bowl and handed it to Jared, it actually tasted pretty good. For fake-chicken-flavor freeze-dried ramen.

They ate in companionable silence, and once they'd finished and cleared up, they stayed quiet, but it felt relaxed.

Jeff yawned, covered his hand with his mouth, and the light of the fire glinted off a thick silver band on his right ring finger. Jeff didn't wear any other jewellery that Jared could see, so Jared guessed it was important.

"What's the story with the ring?" he asked artlessly, then felt himself flush. "Sorry. Rude."

Jeff raised his eyebrows, glanced down at his ring like he'd forgotten it was there, then back up at Jared, dropping his hand. "Nah, it's fine. It's no big deal - ring from my ex, but it's not really about him anymore."

Jared's breath caught in a silent hopeful hitch in his chest, but he nodded steadily and let Jeff continue.

"One of those commitment rings, some bullshit like that - it felt a big deal at the time, but - I don't know. Three years later we split messy, but I kept the ring."

"Don't tell me it's something like a bitter reminder that all men are bastards," Jared said, skeptical.

Jeff laughed. "God, no. Truth is, I just liked it. It became a part of me - it wasn't really about him. I kept it because it felt like - I didn't want to lose a chunk of myself just cause he and I were splitting. So I made a point to keep it, to remind myself, not of him, but that I was still me and I wasn't any different or worse off just because it hadn't worked out."

Then he sighed and rubbed a hand over his jaw, a motion that had already become familiar to Jared, as well as the accompanying faint rasping noise. "Sorry. Guess I get rambly and sorta maudlin when I'm fed."

"Hey, no, I asked," Jared said. "That sounds - a hell of a lot mature than I've been about my exes. I tend towards the whole - bonfire of everything he ever gave me shit."

Jeff laughed and settled down on his back in the grass, crossing his arms behind himself, head propped up on his crossed wrists. "Don't get me wrong, I had some of that, too. He was a bastard at the end, no two ways, but he wasn't all bad. Wouldn't have been with him so long if he was. But people show their best or their worst when things go belly up, and he brought out his ugliness."

"Gotta say," Jared said casually, "I'd pegged you for straight. Think I was too taken in by the manly Hollywood freedom fighter angle."

Jeff gave him a sardonic look. "C'mon, Jared. You're supposed to be from an enlightened generation. You should know that whether you like to fuck men or women has shit to do with how manly or not you present yourself."

Jared watched Jeff in the low light, traced the length of him in the grass; the strength in his arms, the tendons corded in his neck as he turned his head towards Jared; his flat belly, the leather belt snugged over his hips. Yeah. Talk about manly, Christ.

"True," he said. "But you know, sometimes you can tell. That's why gaydar exists."

"Or maybe your gaydar just sucks," said Jeff, grinning up at him.

Jared _hmmm_ d. "Or maybe I thought it was too good to be true," he said softly.

Their eyes snagged in the low light, held for a long, hot moment that had shivers thrilling down Jared's spine, prickling his skin and jolting his heart.

"Jeff--"

Jeff looked away easily, rolled back up to sitting. "Come on. We should turn in. Get some sleep, we got a lot more travelling to do tomorrow."

Disappointment puddled cold in Jared's belly; he tightened his jaw and looked away. "Yeah, sure." he said. "Sleep. Got it." It took him a long while to get any, though, and if the too-steady breaths that Jared was overly aware of from the other side of the fire were any indication, it took Jeff a while too.

  


Jared woke up shivering; in the night he'd wriggled half out his sleeping bag, and the dawn air was grey and chilly against his skin. "Fuck," he complained blearily, sitting up and rubbing at his eyes. He caught the tail end of Jeff glancing at him, and frowned when Jeff didn't say anything. Fuck. He was an idiot. At least he hadn't done anything stupid like actually come on to him; but it didn't seem fair that he was getting an awkward morning after without any of the fun stuff to precede it.

He sighed deeply, the cool air filling his lungs, and started getting ready to move on. Literally as well and emotionally, as he wrapped up his sleep roll.

Jeff communicated mostly in grunts and gestures until they were back on the road, but it was interspersed with jaw-cracking yawns that let Jared know it was probably as much tiredness as it was any lingering awkwardness.

Their booted feet made quiet noises on the road as they walked on, and the sun shot pale yellow beams through thinning clouds of haze.

"Nice morning," Jared commented, then, as they passed a car with the door ripped off and the remains of a woman dragged half out of it, face and arms picked clean to bone by birds and bugs, quickly amended, "Well. Nice as you get these days."

"Man, it's way too early for you to be so glass-half-full," grumbled Jeff, striding along determinedly. "Fuck, I wish I had coffee."

"Well, we need to find some more food and water today somehow. See if we can pick up some coffee for Mr Grumpy Pants at the same time."

Jeff shot him a baleful look, which Jared met with an innocent one of his own, then a smirk which had the corners of Jeff's mouth curve up in response before Jeff turned his head away and made an irritated noise.

Jared grinned, delighted. "See, you can't stay mad at me!"

Jeff glared at him. "You are so annoying."

"You love it."

Jeff frowned, then, glancing at Jared and away, looking like he was remembering why it had been weird between them this morning in the first place. "Jared. Look--"

Jared put up a hand and grinned, wanting nothing less in the world than to have this damn conversation. "No, it's cool! I get it. Not a good idea, yadda yadda. Honestly, it's fine."

Jeff looked at him shrewdly, but Jared kept up the grin, and Jeff graciously took the out. "Alright," he said gruffly. "Just - you know."

Jared didn't know, exactly - whether Jeff thought this was a bad idea because of Jared's age or because the world had gone to shit or because Jeff had more important things to worry about like saving the dregs of the human race or whatever he thought of himself as doing or because he simply wasn't interested in Jared, but he nodded anyway. "Totally."

His smile dropped when Jeff turned and kept on walking. Hell, more like marching; Jared sometimes couldn't believe he'd been a lawyer instead of military. Jared pursed his lips and blew out a silent breath, and picked up his pace to stay a step or two behind Jeff. Fuck, he was a moron, but it could've been worse. Jeff had nipped it in the bud early enough and now he just needed to ride out the crush.

He looked at the shape of Jeff, framed by the morning sun; one square hand held loosely at his side and the other braced on the gun at his hip; the easy roll of his legs and breadth of his shoulders. Right.

They walked in silence for most of the morning, coming across a gas station that seemed - and thankfully, stayed - deserted, and stocking up. There were only three bottles of water left hiding at the back of the defunct cooler, and Jared and Jeff exchanged a glance - it wouldn't last them long. But water was always the problem, and Jared was glumly starting to wonder when people would start to realize that once the bottled water was gone, they were kinda screwed. Most rivers anywhere near cities were pretty rank.

Not something to worry about just yet.

He found a jar of Folgers instant and gave Jeff a shit-eating grin. "No more cranky bear in the mornings," he said, smirking.

"You've known me two days, kiddo, watch it," said Jeff, but he eyed the jar greedily. Jared knew a caffeine addict when he saw one - Aldis hadn't been able to get up in the morning, even with promises of blowjobs, until his first cup. The noises he'd made upon said cup had been almost worth it, anyway. Jared was sort of interested to see if Jeff made the same. 

More ramen, more jerky, a few cans and packet soups and crackers. One sad bag of Raisinets remained by the cashier counter. Chocolate was a rare commodity these days.

They made it out alone and unnoticed, which was a stroke of luck - and was probably why the rest of the day turned out like it did. Luck wasn't in great supply these days.

A couple miles further on down the road, the tarmac widened and crossed a river, which wouldn't have been a problem, but for - well. The river was wide and strong, and the drop just enough to be dangerous, and the bridge was ravaged.

A Mack truck was lodged with its back wheels still on the bridge and its front ones braced against the side of the ravine at their side of the bridge. More cars could be seen littering the ravine leading down to the rushing river. The concrete of the bridge itself was cracked in multiple places, and there was a huge chunk ripped out of the incoming lane, taking out pretty much half the road itself, a car stopped at the edge with its front wheels hanging over the drop.

The barriers that had originally run the length of the bridge had car-sized hole after hole punched out of them all the way down, on both sides, from cars going through them at speed, presumably.

"Holy shit," breathed Jared, and he and Jeff slowed to a stop. "How did this even happen?" he said, gesturing at the massive chunk ripped out of the road.

Jeff shook his head, hands on his hips as he surveyed the bridge. "God only knows."

Jared wondered - definitely not for the first time - how long it had taken, for people to die. He remembered screaming, so it hadn't been split-second instantaneous, but his memory of that afternoon was patchy - probably for self preservation - and he couldn't recall if it had gone on for a while. Had all these people died in seconds, and the chaos was the result of dead bodies in drivers' seats and uncontrolled still-moving cars? Had people felt something happening to them, and panicked during their awful last few moments, driven off the road and into each other?

He shook his head. "Holy shit," he said again.

"We just gotta cross it, Jared," said Jeff, softly. "Don't think about it too much."

"Been _not thinking_ about a lot of stuff since it happened. Sometimes those walls wobble a little," Jared snapped, unfairly he knew, but sometimes - god. It got to him. So much goddamn death. Sometimes it was all you could do to not go crazy thinking about it all.

"Believe me," said Jeff, soft still. "I know."

Jared remembered what Jeff had said - about where he'd been when it had happened. He deflated. "Yeah," he said. "Sorry."

"No worries," said Jeff, and reached out to give Jared a squeeze on the arm. "We just gotta concentrate on getting across."

Usually in areas with this many cars, they could just skirt around them, go to the sides of the road. Not so here. The only way out was through, which would be fine - Jared had no problem climbing over the cars as long as he didn't need to see what was inside them - except if they did that and fell at the wrong place at the wrong time, there were enough raw edges of concrete yawning over nothing but a drop down into the ravine to give Jared a kick of nerves.

"That's going to be the sticky part," said Jeff, pointing at the chunk that had been torn out, which at its widest part took out most of the oncoming lane - and of course the outgoing lane was jammed with cars at that point. They'd have to climb over cars with the hole gaping to their left and a barely-intact barrier to their right.

"Yeah, I'm not looking forward to that," said Jared, in heartfelt agreement. He secured his pack and followed Jeff out onto the bridge.

The wind picked up almost straight away, and the sound of the water underneath them was ominous. They walked swiftly but carefully along the first half of the bridge, skirting around cars, only to have to scramble over the hood of one car for the first few minutes, until they neared the bottleneck of the missing part of the road.

"Okay," Jeff said. "You go first; I'll watch your back, and I can get you if you slip."

"Thanks," Jared said, maybe a little hysterically. "Here's hoping I don't slip sideways. It was nice knowing you."

It looked simple enough. At the crunch point, where the torn edge of the hole curved in, one car was crushed sideways against the right hand barrier, blocking that path, and the part they had to get over was where a large SUV had tried to swerve into the wrong lane and run up and over the front of a red pick-up truck, its thick tires resting on the pick-up truck's hood and the obnoxious silver grill on its nose pointing up, making it look almost aggressive. Daring Jared to pass.

"Get a grip," Jared told himself, and jumped into the bed of the truck. It creaked alarmingly, and Jared eyed where its front left wheel kissed the side of the hole.

"Careful, Jared," Jeff warned from behind him.

Jared bit back three snarky retorts and instead focused on climbing onto the cab of the truck. He knew he was stepping more tentatively than if he'd had solid ground either side of him, and it was probably more dangerous to tread with less confidence and strength, but he couldn't turn off his body's awareness of the drop next to him.

"Right," he said. "Right." He crouched and half jumped, half slid down the pick-up truck's windshield, bracing his palms against the SUV's grill, and started to climb up onto the angled SUV hood, staring pointedly up so as not to be looking right into the driver's seat through the windshield. He had to get up onto the roof next, and because the right wheel was crushed deeper into the pick-up truck's hood, of course the roof tilted towards the hole rather than towards the other side with the cracked barrier and side-ended car.

His heart was beating a fast rhythm in his chest, and his palms were slippery, and he was trying to rush it; he braced a foot on the top of the SUV, hauling himself up, and his boot slipped.

At first he just cursed and tried again, but the jolting motion of missing his footing had started his body sliding off the tilted roof of the car. He cursed louder, legs sliding back down the windshield and thumping into the hood; his hands grabbed blindly to hold onto something.

"Jared!" Jeff shouted, alarmed.

"I've--"

\-- _got it_ , he was going to say, because he thought he had; he'd steadied himself with one hand on the windshield wiper and the other clutched inside the open passenger side window. He'd stopped his slide and was ready to clamber back on top and over and get away from that goddamn edge; but Jared's slide and jolting stop had jarred the car, and the withered, rotted arm of the passenger fell limply out of the window and landed on Jared's wrist.

Jared wasn't squeamish - hadn't been before, and these days you couldn't be; there just literally wasn't the time to be bothered by dead bodies.

But something in his body just reacted, hardwired, to a piece of a dead person, a cold, sickly too-soft fall of flesh against his own, and he jerked away, let go of the open window.

At first all he registered was the primitive horror of the dead flesh on his own, still feeling it; then he clued in to the fact that without his grip in the window, there was too much pressure on his other hand. The windshield wiper snapped off, useless metal in his hand, and he was sliding inexorably towards the edge, and off it, where nothing but empty air waited.

Adrenaline shocked through his body in a giddy rush as he went over, off the hood, and he scrabbled up to grab at the window again, missing. His knee caught the gritty sharp edge of the concrete, and one hand snagged in the lower wheel rims of the SUV, the other scrabbling at the pick-up truck trapped underneath, hand catching onto something inside the wheel well. His other leg kicked out uselessly down through the gaping absence of road, and he looked down instinctively, to see the brown foamy rush of the river far below.

"Jared?" he heard Jeff shout, then yell - god, no, scream - _"Jared!_ "

"Here!" yelled Jared, back, staring blankly at the crushed hood of the red pick-up truck, feeling the sharp torn edge of the concrete tear through his jeans and bite sharp into his skin. "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit--"

"Jared," yelled Jeff again, real fear sharp and thready in his voice, and the truck shuddered as Jeff must have stepped on top it.

"No no, god, stay there don't move!" shouted Jared, the grip he had in the wheel well of the truck precarious and slipping with the movement.

"Oh hell - Jared. Come on, just. Can you pull yourself up? What can I do?"

It was terrifying, in a new way, to hear Jeff sound so _scared_. He'd sounded nothing like this before, and it dug a cold sliver into Jared's chest. "I'm--" he said, with no idea how to finish it, but knowing that there was no way he was letting go. There was only one option here, and it was not to fall any further.

Gritting his teeth through the pain, he pushed hard with his knee on the edge, feeling blood dampen his jeans but the hold he had stay true, enough for him to bring up his free, dangling leg and wiggle a toe hold on the ragged concrete lip, and push up with his knee and toe enough to grab on with both hands to the SUV's passenger window again, the dead passenger's arm drooping between Jared's hands.

For a sick, awful moment, Jared expected the door to just swing open, or rip off, or for the car to just topple off the edge completely, carrying him down to the river. But it held, and Jared could pull up his knee and brace both feet on the concrete, and he pulled himself up until his forehead could press against the top of the window that he gripped hard at the bottom. The SUV groaned, and the tilt meant Jared was leaning backwards slightly out over the gap, but everything stayed still.

Then slowly, the rest of the passenger fell towards Jared.

It was a woman - had been, anyway. Her face was a rotted pulpy mass, her hair stringy and discolored, and her head came to rest against Jared's cheek. He moaned softly in horror, closed his eyes, and knew he couldn't move, couldn't drag himself away from the soft slide of her rotten skin and hair against his cheek, too close to his mouth. If he flinched, if he screamed and let go and pawed at his face like he wanted badly to, he'd fall.

"Jared - hey, Jared. Jared, come on, you're okay."

Jared realized it sounded like Jeff had been saying his name for a while, and his voice was rough like he'd been shouting it. It could have been a while; Jared's arms ached, and he felt groggy, like he'd just - tapped out for a while. He blinked his eyes open, stared past the woman resting against his cheek to the grinning skull of the driver, who seemed to be looking right at him. Hey, buddy! Nice day for a drive.

"Jeff," said Jared slowly, then closed his eyes again tight and hard, and opened them again, looked past the corpse laughing at him and darted his eyes around until he could see Jeff.

Jeff was on the hood of the pick-up truck, wedged in between the windshield of the truck and the grill of the SUV, though he was crammed far back from Jared, against the unhelpful smooth roof of the car caught between them and the barrier.

"Jared, hey - look at me. Hey, kiddo. You're gonna be okay. There you go, keep looking at me. I can't come any closer, I'd tip the balance, so you gotta pull yourself up. The car's already taking your weight, so it'll stay steady, just keep it slow. Come on, just pull yourself up a bit, then if you can get into the window, you come out of the driver's side window, near me."

Jared looked back inside the car. He'd have to crawl across the laps of the happy couple.

"Oh god Jeff I can't, " he said, squeezing his eyes shut and cold, sick goosebumps shuddering across his skin in waves. He felt like every bit of horror he'd felt and suppressed at all the bodies, all the rotting stinking flesh he'd had to see and ignore since Wal-Mart - like it was all pouring into his body right now and he wanted to sob like a little boy. He couldn't, he couldn't touch them any more.

"Jared, look at me!" Jeff commanded, and Jared opened his eyes. "Don't look at them. Look at me. Just keep on looking at me. This is the only way you're going to get to me. The tilt's too steep now, if you try to go over you'll slide off again. Gotta come through here, it's easy, I swear. Look, both the windows are open. Don't look at them. Look at me."

Jared stared right at Jeff and nodded, completely unconvinced, but listening to Jeff's low, firm voice calmed some of the screaming lizard-brain terror that had been trying to take over.

He didn't dare take a deep breath - you got used to the smell, but in cars it was the worst; so he just stared at Jeff as he gathered his scraps of courage, tried to imagine something lame and cliché like taking strength from the implacable certainty in Jeff's eyes. Lame or not, it helped, because he found himself moving. He kept his grip tight with one hand, but worked his other hand into the car, braced his elbow on the side with one arm, then the other, ducked his head and worked his shoulders in.

The car creaked, and Jared grabbed out at random; he got a handful of the woman's leg, the denim of her jeans giving with a noise that made Jared want to tear his own ears off. He moaned again, but he had to, had to focus, had to focus on the way his ass and legs were still hanging out the car, his feet now on tiptoe, the angle hurting his calves, but he hadn't got enough of a grip inside the car yet to give up that toehold and drag himself all the way in because that would mean being _inside the car_.

"Fucking awesome, Jared, I knew you could do it. Come on, lean forward for me and grab the steering wheel - there you go. You got it. Hold tight - look right at me, keep on looking - pull your legs in. Awesome, well done! You're doing so well, that's fucking awesome, I'm gonna find you a fuckin' - Sam's Club sized quart bag of Raisinets--"

Jared's knees and shins were squashing the woman's legs, and his elbow was causing the driver's knee to shift inside his dress pants in a way knees never should, but he was inside - inside the car and Jeff was talking to him, not letting him look away.

"Come on, now grab onto the edge of the window and just pull yourself through that, easy - come on--"

The tilt of the SUV had opened up a narrow crevasse between it and the car to the side, a V-shaped space of slick painted metal. Jeff leaned over, grabbed onto Jared's hand and dragged him the last few inches until his feet left that car, that goddamn car, and his body was folded up like a pretzel in the narrow space.

"Turn around," Jeff urged, "go on, you're almost done." Panting, Jared scrambled through the narrow space, alongside the SUV, trying not to fall, but it didn't matter anyway because the road - solid concrete road - was just there, past the back wheels of the SUV and Jared was down, feet on the road - and soon his knees and his palms too as he crumpled down.

He heard the creaking of the cars as Jeff followed him, then Jeff's hand hooked under the strap of his pack to drag him upright and stumbling forward a few steps. "Quick," said Jeff, "I think the car's gonna fall. I hit it pretty good as I was going past."

They were safe now, past the narrowing of the road and a safe distance from the edge down to the river, but it still made Jared's gut clench cold and tight to turn around and see the car he'd moments ago been inside tip with a groaning creak and fall, as though in slow motion, off the edge of the road and down to the river, with a splash they heard even through the whining of the wind.

"Holy shit," said Jared. "I was just - holy shit, holy shit."

Jeff let go of the hold he still had on Jared's pack and turned him around. "Are you alright?" he demanded.

"Yeah--"

"Jesus Christ, Jared," said Jeff, and tugged Jared into a tight hug. "Don't fucking do that again." His breath huffed in warm gusts past Jared's ear, wafting his hair and sending goosebumps shivering down Jared's neck.

Jared sucked in a breath and held on tight, wormed one hand underneath the pack on Jeff's back so he could grab on, feel the solid strength of Jeff, how he wasn't dead, he wasn't rotting and he wasn't going the fuck anywhere, and let himself shake a little. "I'm okay," he said. "Sorry. Sorry. God. Thanks."

Jeff held on for a long moment, like he couldn't let go - or maybe he sensed that Jared couldn't - then made a rough noise and stood back, holding Jared's shoulder. "Don't worry about it. Just don't fucking - do that."

Jared shook his head mutely. He could still - smell them. The bodies, the corpse smell still on him, and he could see them in his mind's eye. He felt shocky and scared, but finally more human the longer he looked at Jeff.

Jeff looked at him solemnly. Then slowly, the side of his mouth rose. "Told you we'd have fun."

Jared groaned, literally threw his arms in the air like a frustrated housewife, and turned to keep walking. "Fun, he says. _Fun_. Next time I'll send him through the rotting-corpses-and-death-defying-drop obstacle course. It's a twofer! _Fun_."

"Aw, come on," said Jeff, picking up his pace to walk alongside him. "Tell me your trip to _Texas_ would've been half this exciting."

"There is something wrong with you," Jared declared. But he grinned, a private thing, and turned away from Jeff.

\--

They reached the other side of the bridge easily, climbed over the cars throttling the exit, and after that the road joined a freeway. This was harder to navigate as it had many more cars on it, but Jeff said they only need to stay walking this way for one more day; then they'd take a side road and be only a day or two from the base. They were getting close, and as they walked on, Jared could see through the sun's haze, the downtown heights of San Francisco rising up in the distance.

"What's in like in the cities?" asked Jared, curious. He'd been in a pretty small college town when it had happened, and had travelled mostly through suburbs or empty road; he had no idea what things were like in the cities, with the huge concentration of people. Much more death; many more survivors. More chaos all around, he guessed.

"Messy," said Jeff. "I've only seen San Francisco, but the downtown areas, the tourist areas - it's a mess."

He looked back at Jared. "Not all of them, though. I don't know what it's like elsewhere, but in San Francisco - at least at first - there was a concerted cleanup effort from survivors, for parts of the city."

Jared's interest was piqued. "You said 'at first'. What happened?"

Jeff gave a dry laugh. "Well. You get a group of people, politics start to take over. It didn't take long before that became more important than making the city look liveable." He paused. "I can give you the whole run down on how it happened, if you want - from my perspective, anyway. I was in San Francisco, central, and that was where the resistance grew from. Sort of a history you should know, considering where we're going."

It was hard, sometimes, to believe that this was real - that it wasn't the plot of a movie Jeff was telling him; it was something he'd lived through. It felt like being told an awesome story, but every now and again, Jeff's voice would give something away, and Jared would realize with a shiver that it wasn't. This was his world, now, like it or not.

Jared nodded. "I wanna hear."

Jeff told him about how it was in the first few days - how the survivors in the city banded together to try and recreate a community, to start some sort of city clean up. For the first few months, a huge group of people met every day at Speedway Meadows - and even that wasn't everyone in the city who survived, of course. They started talking about city cleanup campaigns, trying to save the infrastructure, keep a supply of clean water, all that.

But before long, it got complicated. Put a big group of humans together, and the politics and power-play always rise above any actual goals they're trying to achieve, layered over with the fact everyone had a brand new ability they were all still learning how to get to grips with, some people clearly more powerful than others. Things got murky. The more powerful people started to think that meant they have more say - either because they could be more useful, or just because no-one wanted to argue with them after seeing them do what they could do.

The same thing was happening on a bigger scale in LA, and out of that unrest grew the coalition. An organized group who explicitly tied in the level of people's abilities to their privileges and the influence they had in the community they were building in the ruins of the city.

People heard about it; even without the modern media, people heard about things fast. In San Francisco - and probably all over - some people defected, mostly the ones who thought their ability gave them sway over others. Out of the mess left in San Francisco grew the resistance. Jeff and the others didn't think of themselves as that, at first, as resisting anything - just a group of people who wanted the new society, however it shook out, not to depend on how powerful you were, but on a democracy. It soon became clear, though, that they needed to exist, needed to hold together as an organized group to stand in direct opposition to the goals and aims of the coalition. Like the coalition was gaining a network of support across the country as rudimentary communication improved, so the resistance had sister groups in Dallas, Phoenix and Denver - that they knew of so far. Others may have picked up their broadcasts on the low-frequency band they'd adopted with radio equipment they'd set up at the base.

Jeff looked out over the road, eyes somewhere else, seeing months ago, as he talked about how they grew. They relocated outside of the city first off, because of space constraints more than anything else. Some people came with them, helped them grow the base, set up for safe habitation and strategizing and politicking. Some people stayed. Apparently there remained a pretty peaceful community in the Castro; clean and safe, at least for now.

But like all such communities dotted around, they had no defense, and no ties to the resistance and its explicit goals. As such, they stood vulnerable, refusing help and ripe for attack.

Jeff shook his head, back with Jared. "They don't want to stand against the coalition, and they don't want to stand against us, of course. That's fine. But when the coalition comes into San Fran - which they will, once they start fully expanding their reach - they'll be fucked. And not in the fun way."

Jared blinked, brought back to earth from musing over what Jeff said, as he banged his shin on the wheel guard of a car he was climbing over.

Jeff looked drawn and anxious, like he cared - like it was his job to care - about the fate of groups of people he didn't even know. This was part of why Jared had wanted to stay out of it. Why did everyone's lives and safety have to be the responsibility of just a few? Why did anyone take that on?

Because they were people like Jeff. Foolish, maybe, but good, and they were the reason the world ever moved forward.

"Have you tried talking to them?" said Jared, shifting his path closer to Jeff as they walked. "God, this keeps on sounding like missionary work, but you know what I mean."

"Yeah, we have. Sometimes someone joins us, but they're - like you were saying earlier. They don't wanna hear it. They're comfortable - and after what everyone's gone through, it's hard to criticize people for wanting to give up a life that feels comfortable and safe."

The adrenaline of the day drained fast once evening hit, and Jared yawned, hugely. "Jeff," he said, trying not to sound too whiny.

Jeff cast him a suspicious look. "What."

"Do we have to rough it tonight?"

Jeff narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean?"

Jared flung his arm around dramatically. "We're on a freeway outside of San Francisco. There are motels every like, two seconds. There was one five minutes back. Can we please find a corpse-free room in a motel and have an actual bed for once?"

Jeff snorted a laugh. "You act like I got you under some forced march, half rations, no rest. Stay upright long enough to find us a motel, and sure."

Jared groaned at the thought. "A bed. A real bed. I thought you had some principled objection to sleeping like normal people."

Jeff rolled his eyes. "I'm just used to roughing it out on patrols. You learn how, you don't gotta search for somewhere to sleep each night. You're not limited. But if there's a bed right there, then sure. My back likes a mattress as much as anyone’s."

Half an hour on down the road, as dusk was spreading its fingers through the air, the road split out into a truck stop, a small greasy diner and a squat one-level motel that Jared would've avoided in his previous life. Now, it looked like a goddamn five-star hotel.

They swung by the diner first, wrinkling their noses at the smell of rotting food - as well as the bodies of people still slumped over the booths - but nabbed some more water from a cooler in the kitchen. Nothing else left was edible.

The motel was off-white with red doors, three sides enclosing its grimy parking lot. The clerk was still at the desk, a rat perched on his head and Jared looked away, a black sort of humor tugging at his mouth at the cheery _ding_ of the bell as they entered.

Jeff made a slight noise of distaste as he pushed the dead motel clerk back in his chair to snag the ring of keys at his belt. "We better get the fuckin' honeymoon suite for this."

The first door they tried had two entangled corpses on the one bed - it was hard to tell anything about them, but the red strappy heels on the body on the bottom and the snow-white hair of the one on top made Jared pretty sure these guests had been renting by the hour.

"Not such a happy ending," said Jeff gruffly, and the next door they tried had two queens and no bodies.

"Motel sweet motel," said Jared, shrugging his pack off and landing face-first on the nearest bed with a groan. It smelt musty and unwashed, and he coughed at the dust that flew up, but stayed prostrating himself on the bed.

"Man, you're a cheap date," complained Jeff. Jared flipped a finger in the rough direction where he could hear Jeff taking off his pack and moving around the room.

"Think I'm gonna be using my sleeping bag on this bed. There are - eugh. Bugs living under the covers."

Jared groaned in disapproval, but it still took him a moment for disgust to hit full force. He wondered if he could feel a wriggling under his cheek or if Jeff's words had put it there. It felt so fucking nice to spread himself over a wide firm mattress. After a second he made another, louder noise and dragged himself up and off the bed.

"Roach Motel in an all too literal sense," Jeff was saying with a grimace as he scooped the bedding and sheets off his bed in one go, chucking them in a corner. Jared pulled a face as roaches scuttled out of the pile of linen. He followed Jeff's suggestion, and once he'd taken his pile of sheets - moving with roaches and god knows what else - outside into the parking lot, he flipped his mattress and surveyed the bare side of it. It seemed bug free and intact, and with his sleeping bag on top, it'd do damn well.

Jeff came back in from dumping his own pile of sheets outside, crushed a couple of remaining roaches underfoot, and flipped his mattress fast and easy with a poof of dust but thankfully no stray bugs. "There we go," he pronounced. "Fit for a king."

"A king of the road, maybe."

"Potay-to, potah-to."

Despite his earlier begging, Jared didn't fall asleep easily. He lay down in his clothes, first, as he was used to, but the second he closed his eyes, it felt as though all he could smell, all he could _breathe_ was the sweet-rotten stench of the corpses from the car, the smell still clinging to his clothes with a ferocity as though their dead hands were clutching at him.

Yeah. The clothes had to go. He stripped down to his underwear as Jeff muttered at him to shut up, and wrapped himself tight in his sleeping bag, but he still had the phantom smell in his nose, and it was too quiet.

It felt good, physically: the support of the mattress, even a thin cheap one felt good, as well as the ability to stretch out and flop around without running his hip into a rock or wet patch of ground. But it felt wrong, also. There was no regular light of cars passing in bright squares through the window, no soothing buzz of traffic, a weird absence in a highway motel. It was creepy in the way the usual absence of people, cars, light and movement had mostly stopped being for Jared, but he hadn't been in a motel since. It was a specific context, and one he hadn't got used to in this new life.

He fell asleep at some point, he knew, because he was woken up by a bitch of a nightmare sometime in the pitch black of night.

Jared had never really had nightmares, before. A few times as a kid, like most people, and a few weird dreams once he was an adult but rarely anything he'd call a nightmare.

He got them on a fairly regular basis since Wal-Mart - again, he figured, like most people. Most people who were left. However people survived, wherever they were when it happened, that experience alone was likely enough to give people nightmares for a healthy chunk of years.

This was a bad one, even by those standards. His terror earlier in the day - clinging to that car and nearly sobbing like a child, the soft touch of the corpse on his face - had sunk its cold fingers in and gotten a hold on his psyche. It brought back every horrible thing he'd seen since Wal-Mart to parade through his subconscious dream-world. All the way back to his friend Sandy, in her pajamas and cowboy boots like she'd always worn for the Sunday morning grocery run, falling on top of him, blood running from her nose and her eyes wide and glassy.

His throat felt sore from screaming and his skin was tacky with slick, cold sweat, and his arms ached. He was trying to thrash, but Jeff was braced over him, strong hands gripped around Jared's wrists and pressing them down into the mattress.

At first, all Jared could feel was that he was being restrained, and a bolt of fear shocked through him and he struggled harder, but Jeff was saying something, talking in that low soothing tone he'd used on him that morning - yesterday - and it got through to Jared, slow, and he fell limp and panting under Jeff's hold.

"There you go - come on. Shhh, Jared. It's just a dream, I got you. You're safe, you're here with me in the Roach Motel, remember? Look at me, you're safe."

Jared looked at Jeff, at the dim shape of him. The faint starlight that came through the window was barely enough to see by but gleamed softly in Jeff's eyes, the shape and planes of his face already familiar and fond to Jared.

"Jeff," he said hoarsely. "Jeff."

"Yeah, kiddo. You okay?"

"Sorry. I just - nightmare. Sorry."

"Don't apologize," said Jeff grimly. "Ain't a problem. I get 'em bad myself sometimes. Part of this new life."

"Yeah. It's - I'm okay. Thanks."

Jeff let go of Jared's wrists, and Jared drew his arms back down into himself, shivering now as the sweat dried on his skin. Jeff sat back and Jared bit his lip hard to stop himself from giving in and asking Jeff to stay with him. He wasn't a kid.

"You good to sleep?"

"I’m not sure," answered Jared honestly.

Jeff nodded. "Try to. We got a long walk tomorrow."

Jeff got off the bed, then, and Jared clenched his jaw. He was a grown man, and Jeff wasn't going to stay and baby him. He'd be just across the room. Jared drew his sleeping bag tighter against himself and stared into the darkness, wishing for more light, because in the darkness it was almost like having your eyes closed, and the gory images stood up vivid, stacked in the places in his brain that he tried not to poke.

Jared could hear Jeff getting back onto his own bed, the creak of it, and then more creaking, and Jeff's footfalls again in the space between them.

Jared started as Jeff climbed back onto Jared's bed.

"Uh--"

"Nightmares suck. Just - letting you know I'm here. Shut up. Go to sleep."

Jeff climbed over Jared and settled behind him, rubbed a hand up and down Jared's arm in a way that was probably supposed to be soothing, but just made Jared's skin jump up into goosebumps again. He was confused, tired, still shaky and twitchy from the nightmare, and he rolled backwards, just a bit, because the dependable warmth of Jeff was something he needed right then, and his body sought it out without his express permission. There was a bunched bulk of sleeping bag between them, but Jared wriggled closer until he could crane his head towards Jeff's neck, and Jeff's hand landed on his head. "Night," he whispered.

He dozed, on and off, never losing the awareness of Jeff's body in the bed next to him, slowly changing from comforting and calming to maddening and tempting. He could feel his body getting hotter as the cold sweat dried and his natural body heat kicked in, bolstered by Jeff's heat right next to him, and the pounding of his heart racking up his temperature every time he woke up enough to realize all over again that the shape near him was Jeff; that he could feel the man breathing, smell the light sweat of his skin.

He woke up with a slight gasp after dipping into proper sleep, and Jeff's eyes were open, glinting in the dim light when Jared opened his own. Jared had kicked off his own sleeping bag at some point, and Jeff was close to him, both of them on their sides on the middle of the bed.

Jared licked his lips, heart kicking in his chest, watching Jeff just watch him.

"Can't sleep," he said, eventually, voice low and rough.

Jeff blew out a breath through his nose, and he lifted his arm, traced his fingers down the side of Jared's face, so softly that Jared's eyes slid closed at the touch, mouth falling open. Jeff brushed Jared's sweat-damp hair off his face, and Jared caught Jeff's wrist in his hand and looked at him.

"Jeff."

Jeff looked away. "Jared, I - I can't."

Jared shifted closer, thumb rubbing over the spur of bone on Jeff's wrist. He dropped his head to Jeff's chest, opening his mouth against the scattering of soft hair there, breathing in deep the tangy scent of him, his mouth watering sharply and his body lighting up in slow, hot pulses, cock thickening lazily between his legs. He dragged his open mouth up, over Jeff's collarbone, tasting the man's skin as he went, salt sharp on his tongue, rubbing the point of his nose up Jeff's neck, setting his teeth over Jeff's jaw and looking up at him through his eyelashes.

"Why not?" he said, lips brushing the corner of Jeff's mouth.

Jeff was held tight, sleepiness gone from his body, which thrummed tensely against Jared; in a whirl of movement, Jeff had Jared on his back, his hands again holding Jared's wrists to the bed, Jeff leaning half over him.

"Jesus Christ, Jared," Jeff breathed. He dropped his head down until his face was close to Jared's, his nose sliding along the side of Jared's. His breath was hot on Jared's mouth, and Jared's lips parted in heady anticipation.

But Jeff didn't kiss him; he moved down, running his nose down Jared's cheek, down his neck in an echo of what Jared had done; his lips dragged in hot glancing touches, and he set his teeth down over the protrusion of Jared's collarbone, a hot little pinch that made Jared shudder.

"Oh god," whined Jared. "Please, Jeff."

Jeff let go, dropped a kiss on the bite, his beard scratchy around the impossible softness of his lips. He looked up at Jared.

"This could be such a bad idea."

"Jeff--" Jared said, near-frantic with the need for more, no words coming to his tongue to tell Jeff how much in this moment he didn't care why Jeff might think it would be a bad idea; but Jeff was moving, already. He groaned, bringing his leg over to straddle Jared, and settle his weight over Jared's hips. Jared moaned, rolling his hips up, grinding his cock into the weight of Jeff's ass, shameless and dizzy with it.

Jeff's grip remained tight on Jared's wrist, and a thrilling shock zinged through Jared when he tried to move his hands and Jeff kept the hold fast and firm. Jeff leaned down, keeping eye contact with Jared as he shifted his hips, so Jared could feel the press of his fully hard dick into Jared's belly.

"God, Jared," said Jeff, a low rumble, his eyes closing as he rubbed his nose against Jared's again. "What - what you do to me." He opened his mouth, let his lips skate the edge of Jared's wantonly open mouth, then pulled back as Jared craned his head up, seeking. "What you fucking do to me, you have no idea."

Then he kissed Jared, hard; slanted his open mouth over Jared's and kissed him with desperation, like a man dying of thirst drinking from a spring.

Jared's hands opened and closed uselessly in Jeff's hold and he kissed back, as best he could in the onslaught. He tilted his hips, spread his legs apart and up until Jeff sat in the cup of his pelvis and Jared could brace his thighs on the outside of Jeff's hips, signalling his desires as clearly as he could without begging with words to get fucked.

Jeff rubbed his tongue slick and greedy over the ridges of Jared's teeth, the roof of his mouth, before taking Jared's bottom lip between his teeth in a cruel sharp pinch that had Jared aching with want.

"I know what you want," Jeff murmured into Jared's mouth, the humid damp space between their mouths that kept sliding into biting wet kisses. "I - jesus. Jared - I can feel it. In your cock, in my _head._ I can see it, like I've never seen anything before - see what you want from me and I--"

Jared moaned, arched his head back into the pillow and let Jeff suckle a path down his neck, overcome with a humiliating arousing rush of knowing that Jeff’s ability was showing him what Jared wanted from him, was showing him Jared spread out, begging for him, hole wanting to be filled; was showing Jared on his knees dipping his back like a slut; showing Jeff all the dark hot thoughts inside about how he wanted Jeff to hold him down and cover him and own him--

"I can't," said Jeff, sounding torn, lips against Jared's neck. "Let me just--"

He let go of one of Jared's wrists and reached down between their bodies, lifting his hips and shoving down his pants and drawing Jared's cock out of his underwear with deft movements until he could grip their dicks together in his hand.

"Jeff, god," panted Jared, his now free hand shifting restlessly on the pillow and then moving to grab at Jeff's back as Jeff gripped them firmly.

Jeff's cock was blood-hot and hard against his, and the precome Jared was drooling made Jeff's grip slick and smooth. God, Jared could feel each ridge and vein of Jeff's swollen prick rubbing against the sensitive underside of his own, the rims of their cockheads catching and sliding with sparks of sensation.

He wanted more - felt like he ached down to his toes with it, for Jeff to just _take_ him - but he'd take this. Jeff's big, firm hand, getting him there, Jeff's fat cock wedged against his own, twitching and needy like his, the two of them sweating and frantic in the dark.

He moaned, tossed his head and jabbed his hips in helpless motions towards Jeff. Jeff growled and pressed down harder on Jared's wrist, so Jared stilled himself, panting with the effort, and let Jeff set the pace, rubbing down into Jared like he was fucking him, the motion and the sensation such that Jared could almost imagine.

Jeff bit at the line of Jared's jaw, smeared his mouth over Jared's cheek and kissed him messily, rumbling filthy words as he screwed his hips down into Jared and twisted his hand around them sharp and good. "Want it so bad, don't you, sweetheart? Want me to flip you over and shove inside you. Stuff you full, make you fucking beg for it. Take me so sweet, I bet, you'd just open on up for me - _god_."

Jeff's fingers rubbed in slippery circles around the heads of their cocks, thumb pressing into Jared's wet slit with a bright flash of pleasure that had Jared open-mouthed and noiseless, nails scratching lines into Jeff's back that would be red and raised tomorrow.

"Jared - aw, shit, kiddo, do you even--"

Jeff went tense and jerky, burying his face in Jared's neck and his grip going tight, strokes slippery-rapid as his cock swelled fat and urgent against Jared's, splattering come over Jared's belly. Jeff pumped his hand over them hard as he pulsed out the last few streaks, and the grip of his hand, now a smoothly wet slide as he coated Jared in his own thick load, made Jared's orgasm roar up on him, a fizzing build in his belly and tingles clenching his toes, shuddering all the way up his legs.

He went taut all over, spine snapping into an arch and head thrown backwards, mouth locked open on a wordless scratchy yell. He brought his legs up to cross his ankles behind Jeff's back and surge his whole body into Jeff, falling into the explosive rush of his orgasm, letting Jeff take him through it, hold him. It burned hot throughout him, his balls drawing up fat and hard, jetting out sticky come in long wet globs all over himself, all over Jeff's hand, the mess of the two of them covering Jared's belly in cooling wet streaks.

Jared floated, for a moment, in that hot, satisfied place in his head, letting his legs slowly fall back to the bed as his whole body hummed with afterglow. He blinked his eyes open when Jeff shifted on top of him and rolled off, landing on his back with a great gusty sigh.

Jared made a slight noise at the unpleasant feel of the come smeared on his belly, starting to dry and pull tight at the edges. He sat up, head swimming, and looked around at the bare mattresses and his sleeping bag, his pack with his few clothes in it, and ended up staggering over to the windows on sex-weak legs to wipe his belly off on the thin polyester curtains.

Jeff laughed, startling Jared.

"What?" he said, defensively. "It was itchy."

Jeff shook his head, the faint starlight highlighting his bare shoulders. "Sorry. I was just. Having a crisis moment, and you're wiping jizz off your stomach with motel room curtains."

Jared shrugged, smirking, then dropped his hands and the curtain. He sat back down on the edge of the bed, and pulled his underwear up properly and tugged a clean t-shirt from his pack, feeling exposed and on the edge of cold now the urgency of sex was fading from his body.

He rubbed a hand over his mouth. "Speaking of. I - you wanted this. I know you did. So why is it such a bad idea? You keep acting like this – us – is so freaking awful. Kinda hurts a guy's feelings." He looked back over his shoulder at Jeff, the post-orgasm lassitude fading from his body, his gut tensing up with that stupid anxiety that only got involved once you slept with someone.

Jeff hauled himself upright, elbows on his knees, hands dangling between. "I don't wanna make this a big deal."

Jared tried not to flinch.

Jeff glanced at him, then away. "I - we don't know what's going to happen, right? I got a cause, I got things I need to do, and I don't want to promise you anything when I might have to leave."

Jared nodded. "Right." Because this was just a fling, a foxhole sorta thing, and of course Jeff saw Jared as a boy, one who'd want promises and trust and stupid stuff like that. Stuff Jeff wasn't interested in giving.

It had seemed like more, with Jeff braced over him. _What you do to me_.

But Jeff had his reasons, and what else could Jared do but nod and go along?

It wasn't until morning, when dawn light filtered through and got them up and moving - though Jared was sure Jeff hadn't slept a wink for the rest of the night either - that Jared noticed he'd managed to turn his bed and sleeping bag a passionate scarlet red. He didn't remember doing it, but he'd felt like he was exploding when Jeff had made him come, like he was flying apart at the seams, so he wasn't too surprised. Jeff's bed remained its dull, grimy off-white, and Jared flushed hard when he saw Jeff looking at his bed.

"Sorry," he mumbled, and touched it, but the color wouldn't fade. So much for his stupid pathetic ability.

He just wanted to get to the base, now. Maybe other people, a community like Jeff had promised, would be what he needed to snap out of this.

  


Jared was subdued as they continued walking, and Jeff could feel it, and that was half the problem. Whatever it was he'd felt when he'd first seen Jared, it was getting stronger daily. There was a constant low awareness in the back of his head, of where Jared was, of _how_ he was. What had started as a warning flare when Jared was in danger had become more like a goddamn barometer for his mood.

He'd felt the raw panic on the bridge when Jared had fallen, felt it tie in with his own; he'd felt Jared's stark cold fear of the nightmare, his loneliness when Jeff had moved away, and he'd had to come back into Jared's bed just to stop it. And Jared was beautiful and needy and Jeff was weak, and when he'd had Jared writhing underneath him, he'd felt _so much_. Images and pleas and all these things Jared was projecting, things that he wanted – maybe things that would happen or maybe things Jeff wanted – turn into this crazy hot tangle in his head.

Jeff didn't get it. He was a premonition guy, not telepathy, but Jared was opening up all sorts of new things for him. It was so unlike the way his power had ever worked before, and it was bugging him; usually once his premonition passed, that was it. He felt no more from that person. Jared was apparently just determined to upset everything about Jeff's life, it seemed.

But Jared was important, that he'd known from the second he'd met him. And Jared was important on a scale that scared Jeff, on a scale that surpassed Jeff and his feelings for the boy, whatever they might be, and he had to nip it in the bud. Not let this get too far. Or Jared was probably going to get hurt and Jeff almost certainly was.

The freeway was wide, and more densely packed with cars the closer in to the city they got, so the silence wasn't as awkward as it could have been. They were pretty focused on making their way past and over the cars, and the awkwardness did fade as they continued on, helping each other and starting to pick up conversation.

Except Jeff would sometimes look at Jared and feel a sense-memory flash so hard it felt like a premonition, except for how it didn't start with a tickle in the back of his head. No, this came with a tightness of a breath and flush of heat: Jared's face soft with pleasure, his neck arched and bared for Jeff in the dim light. The feel of his legs wrapped around Jeff's back; the thrust of his cock, fat and hard and eager--

Jeff shook his head and edged past an overturned truck and pointedly looked away from Jared.

The sun was getting lower in the sky when Jeff recognized the exit they'd need to take towards the base, and despite himself, he grinned at the sight. Yeah, it may be a school building - that he'd helped strip of children's corpses - crossed with a something like a kibbutz and a military complex, but it was his home, now, and for all he'd only been there a handful of months, really, it still felt home, to him. In a visceral, safe way that nowhere else but his childhood home had felt in his life before.

"Hey, guess what?" he called over to Jared, who was jumping down off the hood of a blue sedan.

He looked over, eyebrow raised, face young and open and pretty in the deepening afternoon sunshine, and Jeff felt a tightness in his chest. He smiled through it - because of it - and said, "We're nearly home."

The air was starting to smell of the ocean, both fresh and rancid in waves as the ocean air also brought with it whiffs of the beaches clogged with garbage and sewage. It was a smell Jeff was used to, even liked, if you could ignore the bad parts. That was pretty much how you had to live, these days.

Jared stopped in the middle of the road as they turned a curve, and Jeff grinned at the childish look of awe on his face.

"You got electricity?" he said, and Jeff laughed, feeling like he was introducing a time-traveller to modern technology.

He looked over at the lights glowing in the darkening sky, then back at Jared. "Not throughout, but we light the perimeter and some of the main rooms with the school's back-up generators. There's even a block where we have running water and showers, but we only let people use the shower once a week each."

Jared closed his eyes and groaned aloud. "A real shower."

"Hot, too."

"Now you're just talking dirty to me."

Jeff cleared his throat and looked away, kept on walking, and heard Jared fall into step just behind him.

"Hey, Jeff?"

Jeff looked over. "Yeah?"

Jared was still staring ahead at the lights of the their destination. "I just wanted to thank you. You know. You said you'd bring me here safe, and you did, and I - I'd probably be dead somewhere a fraction of the way to Texas now, otherwise." Jared shot him a look sideways. "I think it was a stroke of luck, meeting you. So - thanks."

Jeff nodded, feeling absurdly grateful. "Hey. Any time, kiddo."

Jared looked at him again and their eyes caught, hot and tense, and there was no use in pretending Jared wasn't having the same memory he was. Jeff's gut tugged sharp and insistent and he tore his eyes away, looked ahead and kept walking. Fuck, why did everything always have to get so complicated.

Half a mile out, they saw the first person - except the mad bikers - that they'd seen since the night they'd met. Jared grew tense, pulling closer and shoulders going up. Jeff nudged him with an elbow. "Don't worry. Just a lookout. Mike, I think."

He waved a hand in the air, palm flat and forward, and the guy - yeah, definitely Mike - returned it.

"Hey," Jeff hollered, when they were within earshot, and Mike hopped up off the hood of the car he'd been perched on and walked towards them.

"Good to see you, Jeff," he said, and they took each other's arm, hands clasped firmly on forearms. "Who's your recruit?"

Jeff grinned. "Mike, Jared. Jared, Mike. Jared's a sorta - stray I picked up along the way."

Jared nodded in greeting, quiet and wary, only giving Jeff a fleeting glare for the stray comment. He returned the smile, though, when Mike grinned at him and said, "Welcome to the resistance. We're the good guys, and the good guys always win. Movies told me so. Just don't wear a red shirt, you'll be fine."

"Come on," said Jeff to Jared, then nodded at Mike as they walked on past him. "Gen in?" he directed back at Mike.

"In her office, far as I know," said Mike over his shoulder as he settled back watching the road, hand ready on the butt of his gun. Good guy. He’d been a cop, previously, so he’d been pretty invaluable in a lot of ways, practical and theoretical.

"Gen," said Jared. "She's fire-eyes, right?" He made exploding finger motions in front of his eyes, and Jeff snorted.

"Yeah, yeah, that's the one. Pretty useful for cooking food, let me tell you that. She's our unofficial leader - she was in PR in her previous life, and she’s got one hell of a head for strategy and planning. Go so far as to say a genius, but that might just be the whole fire-eyes thing. It inspires a certain amount of awe."

Jared grinned. "Sure you don't mean pant-wetting fear?"

Jeff grinned. "Tomay-to, tomah-to."

They were at the main gated entrance now, where two more people stood either side, rifles slung over their shoulders. _Hill View Elementary_ was printed on a plaque affixed to the wall on the left side of the simple tall iron gates, the words half-obscured by the person standing in front of it, her dark blonde hair up in a high ponytail. Jeff exchanged a glance with Jared, wryly silently acknowledging that yeah, the cliché movie-set feel wasn't going anywhere.

"Jeff Morgan, reporting back," Jeff called out as they approached.

"Hey Jeff," said the girl on the left amiably. "Back earlier than we thought."

Jeff shrugged. "Lost my radio a week out, bringing someone back."

Jared gave a dorky wave, and Katie smirked at him. "Come on in," she said, and with a nod at Rob on the other side of the gate, unlocked the padlock. Security was limited by the lack of power and the fact that a good number of people on both sides had abilities that rendered gates pretty much useless, but the sight of a hefty padlock and thick chain wound around the gates was reassuring nonetheless.

The building was fairly modern, one storey tall for most of it, in plain brick and concrete, though it raised higher in the south wing where the gymnasium and concert hall were located, now a conference room and training center.

Jared followed Jeff in through the gates, headed across the front parking lot towards the main entrance door, eyes wide as he looked around, glancing up at the security lights set up around the perimeter wall, and the glow of the halogens in a square around the sports field, which doubled up as communal leisure area and training field.

"Aren't you sort of - announcing your presence, with the lights?" said Jared, brow creasing. "I mean, you gotta be able to see this place for miles at night."

Jeff shrugged. "Well, in some ways that's the point. The coalition knows we're here - we came from the same original group, there're no secrets about where we are or what we're here for, just like we know where they're based and what they're doing. It's just the details on both sides we try and keep secure. And also - we want people to know we're here so they know where to come if they need us. If they want to join us."

"Why doesn’t the coalition just send a team over to - you know, attack? They're powerful enough, right?"

Jeff shook his head, and together they entered the building. It was dark inside after the brightly lit grounds, but the windows let in enough light to see. "They're too smart for that. It would make too much of a statement. The bad shit they do, they're circumspect about it for the most part, or at least not flashy and showy. They want people to think they've got it right, that they're being reasonable and sensible. Progressive, even - moving forward in the new stage of evolution, where we're bogged down in old-fashioned ideals like equality, making a mess of things. It sways more people than you'd think."

"The people who they classify above level 3, I bet," said Jared, sounding surprisingly bitter. "The people who would end up benefiting anyway, and want to pretend it's not at the expense of the people left at levels 1 and 2."

Jeff glanced over. "Yeah. People don't want to believe the bad stuff is true, so the coalition are careful about it ‘til they've got them on board. And once people realize they're safe - more than that. They're privileged. It's hard to get them to give that up to help the people who were just unlucky enough to get, well."

"To get shitty powers like mine," Jared finished for him. "Look, I - I don't know as much about it as you do, but I'm willing to trust you and believe you about what they do, and I don't know what level I'd be officially classified as, but I'm guessing it's something bad. Like down at 1 or 2."

Jeff hesitated. He didn't know what exact criteria they had - or were still ironing out - for classifications, but knowing what he did of Jared's power - its limits, its weakness, Jared's seeming lack of ability to be able to control it - remembering the bed he'd involuntarily turned and couldn't switch back. Okay - not the time to think about that. But he'd guess Jared was a 1. "Sorry to say it, kiddo, but yeah, you wouldn't be a 4 or 5." No point in making him feel any worse or more scared. "You're in the right place."

Jared huffed a small laugh at that. "Guess I got you to thank for that. Again."

"I'm just glad we made it here in one piece. That you're safe." Their eyes caught again as Jeff's voice softened at the end of his sentence, and it took Jeff a moment to be able to pull his gaze away, cursing himself inwardly.

He cleared his throat. "Look, I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired. We can do the big intros and tour tomorrow, you wanna get some sleep?"

Jared looked at him, nodded. He looked young and vulnerable and kind of sad in the half-light coming through the windows in the corridor, and Jeff remembered him again, last night, unashamed and needy, coming apart in Jeff's arms like he trusted him to be there to keep him together; and hated the shuttered look that came over Jared’s face the longer they looked at each other. But he couldn't, he couldn't let Jared fall that openly into him. It wasn't - it was better like this.

He waved Jared on. "Come on."

He stopped in the school's administration office first where Kim was on duty with the log book. She grinned at Jeff as he came in.

Jeff was hit then with a wave of his premonition - unrelated to Jared and focused on Kim, for the first time since he'd met Jared. It was almost a relief to have it working normally.

It was a positive wave he got from Kim - not very detailed but a surety that she was going to do something good, that she was going to be helpful and a very good friend to Jeff. He couldn't pin down the timeframe, but it wasn't the distant future.

He smiled at her, possibly too widely, but god, it felt good the few times he had one of those. Never failed to restore his faith in the dregs of humanity a little.

"What?" she said, smiling back, though a little unsure.

"Ah, nothing," he said. "Just got a little--" he tapped his head. "Positive feeling from you."

She raised her eyebrows, looking a little confused, then grinned at him. "I'll take that as a compliment, and avoid prying any further. What can I do you for, Jeff? Katie radioed through you were back and bringing a stray."

Jared stopped eyeing Jeff at that and turned to Kim, raising an eyebrow as she unwittingly repeated Jeff's own words to Mike. He smirked, like he was trying to look amused, but it was strained. "Jeff does this often, then?"

Kim looked him over, assessing. "No, actually, he's not usually the bleeding heart type - he doesn't cut patrols short and he lets people make their own way if they want to join us. So what's so special about you? You're cute, I'll give you that."

Jared glanced over at Jeff, looking nonplussed and maybe relieved. Jeff cleared his throat impatiently. "Stop weirding the kid out and sign us in so we can get some sleep." He breathed an irritated sigh through his nose when Kim gave him a knowing smirk. "Not like - just hurry up."

"Of course," she said smoothly, and pulled out the residents' log, signed Jeff back in and made a new entry for Jared.

She looked up at him. "Not to strip you of your humanity, or anything, but your ID number is AD93. Don't worry, we'll still all call you Jared, but that's used to allocate showers and rations and stuff, so remember it."

"AD93. Got it," said Jared. He shook his head. "I feel like I'm in a prison or something."

She grinned. "Nah, prisons have beds and televisions. But on the plus side, you can just walk out. Just let me know you're going first and you're free to leave any time."

She slapped a small round badge into his hand, a child's safety pin on the back, with his number on it in red Sharpie. "You don't have to wear it all the time, but keep it on you."

Jared fingered it, making the childish thing look tiny in his big hands and those long slim fingers. "Right."

"Empty slots in Room 4B tonight, Jeff."

"Ah," said Jeff. "Math. I love brushing up on my elementary school calculus before I fall asleep."

Jared raised an eyebrow at him as they left the admin office. "Classrooms," Jeff explained. "A bunch of them in the south wing are sleeping spaces, with bedding. No beds, but decent enough padding on the floors and the room's separated into sections with privacy screens. There are a few supply closets that've been turned into private sleep rooms if people want a night on their own, or with -" he raised an eyebrow, "--select company, but they're on an allocation basis like the showers."

"Got it," said Jared. "So we're in a math classroom for tonight. Aw, man. Yesterday wasn't bad enough, tonight I'm gonna have nightmares about taking a test I haven't studied for."

Jeff laughed, carefully not thinking about last night. "Don't worry, you don't gotta take an entry exam. Just sleep."

Some people hated the communal sleeping arrangements of the community at the base, missed their privacy, but Jeff didn't mind it so much. There was something comforting about sleeping in a room full of other souls, the soft noises of sleep, snores, movement, reminding him where he was and why whenever he woke up.

And he was grateful for the other people settling in when he and Jared got into the classroom and chose a corner, adjacent sections, and Jeff couldn't think of anything but Jared's body under his, of what had happened the last time they'd slept, of Jared spread out over a soft surface, looking up at Jeff like he'd give him anything, let him do anything.

Jeff was weak, and he didn't know he could resist Jared if they were alone.

\--

In the morning, Jeff stood up and stretched, groaning as his back popped, and then rested his elbows on the screen set up between his sleeping section and Jared's next to him.

"Wake up, sleepyhead," he said, as other people in the room started stirring. "Time to show you around your new home."

"Mm," said Jared, flinging an arm over his face and snuggling back down into the blanket.

"Oh, you wanna sleep? Okay, no problem. I'll just go eat two rations' worth of bacon. Thanks, Jared."

Abruptly, Jared was standing, blankets falling to the floor as he swayed slightly, glaring at Jeff with sleep-bleary eyes. "Bacon?"

The mess hall was still essentially unchanged from when it had been a lunch room - the kitchen had been modified somewhat, from gas ovens to open fires, but the kitchen volunteers served from the same strip of low counter and metal tubs, and the tables all stayed. Jeff mostly didn't notice anymore, but as they entered he saw Jared looking out over the room, at how it looked both slightly comical and inexplicably sad to see everyone sitting at tables just that bit too low and small for adults.

"Stay here for more than a week or two and you pretty much have to pitch in with something," said Jeff as they lined up for breakfast. "Kitchen, cleanup, agriculture are the main three - the smaller sports field's now vegetable gardens. But there's also the resistance committee - basically defense, strategy and progress, all that kind of stuff. We're not military, though, like I said - no obligation to be on it."

"Do you have to be a certain - level, to be part of the committee?" asked Jared, frowning.

"God, no. One of our best defense strategists has the grand power to regenerate any limbs he loses. Which is pretty neat, but not what you'd call powerful. He'd be a Level 2, if we classified, which we don't. But he's one of our most important guys." Jeff shrugged. "It's not about your new ability. It's about what people can bring to the table regardless."

"But the people who can turn invisible are pretty useful," Jared said, with a smirk.

"Well, yeah," Jeff allowed. "But you know, if someone could do something really useful and important for the resistance, we still wouldn't insist they had to be a part of it."

Jared closed his eyes and smiled slightly as the smell of bacon reached him. "God, it's been way too long."

"Shall I give you some privacy with your food?" asked Jeff, amused, as Jared's eyes avidly followed the bacon as his serving was dumped on his plate, after he gave his ID number.

"Shut up," said Jared, following Jeff out into the room. "I haven't had bacon since all this started. This is a moment."

Jeff saw a familiar face at a half-empty table and pointed. "That's Jensen. Mind if we sit? He's a pretty powerful psychic, Gen's right hand man if anyone is. But he's a really good guy, good friend of mine."

"Sure," said Jared easily, but as they got closer, Jeff saw Jared give Jensen a once over, and a muscle in his jaw twitched as he slid a tight glance at Jeff. Jeff didn't get it at first, then realized that maybe Jared was jealous. Jensen was extremely good looking, a fact that Jeff appreciated aesthetically but had never been drawn to beyond that, but Jared wouldn't know that.

And the fucked up thing was the low satisfied curl in his belly that Jared did feel jealous, that Jeff wanted him to, that the low possessive part of him wanted Jared to give a shit, wanted Jared to want Jeff all to himself.

Jeff didn't know how to reassure Jared without being awkward and obvious, and anyway he was the one trying to make this _no big deal_. For both their sakes.

He shook his head slightly and sat down.

"Hey, Jensen," he said, and Jensen looked up from his breakfast and blinked sleepily, then grinned wide as he recognized Jeff.

"Dude! Welcome back!" he said, and stood up to lean over the table and give Jeff a lopsided half hug.

"Yeah, just got back last night," said Jeff, sitting back down, acutely aware of Jared's hot eyes on him, and also of the fact that Jensen was a pretty powerful psychic and if Jeff, who didn't have Jensen's telepathic skills, could feel Jared's jealousy, then Jensen was probably getting a faceful.

Jensen just sat back down and smiled placidly, looking at Jared with a bland, welcoming, open expression.

"Jensen, this is Jared - he came back with me."

Jared nodded, a perfunctory bob of his head, and shook Jensen’s proffered hand tightly, and Jeff could see the edges of Jared's shirt sleeves turning dark grey.

Jensen didn't look at all insulted by Jared's less than warm welcome; just smiled again and then glanced at Jeff, and it was only knowing the guy for a good few months that meant Jeff could read the knowing smirk hiding in the corners of his mouth.

"Bacon everything you thought it would be, Jared?" Jeff asked instead, and Jared guilty jerked his attention away from glaring at Jensen's plate as if he could poison the food.

Jensen looked unruffled, and blithely ate his own breakfast, though he gave Jared a few glances throughout it, looking thoughtful.

"Gotta run," said Jensen, when he was done. "Meeting Gen to go over some defense stuff." He looked somber. "A lot of us - ESPs - are sensing something. No-one knows what, but general foreboding stuff, so we're tightening up on a few weak links in security."

Jeff nodded, frowning. "I'm debriefing with Gen and the committee this afternoon. See you there?"

"Sure thing. See you, Jared," said Jensen, and Jared looked both annoyed and guilty as he nodded, and then shot a dark look after Jensen.

Jeff bit back a smirk and finished his breakfast.

Jared lost his glower as he finished the bacon and scrambled eggs, and wiped his plate with the thin slice of toast. "God, that was good," he said, leaning back in his chair. "Worth the journey."

"Come on, human garbage disposal. Let me show you the place."

It took most of the morning to show Jared around the base fully, from the sleep wings to the offices and meeting rooms the committee used; from the cool storage rooms to the gardens in the field, the working shower block, and library which remained a functional library, with extra shelves added in and crammed with books stripped from excursions to city libraries. There was a team of volunteers that ran classes, and was working on getting a full curriculum set up, drawing on the experience and knowledge of anyone at the base who wanted to hold a class.

At each place, Jeff was greeted by whoever was on duty at the time - most of them he knew personally by now, some he just knew of - and introduced Jared. It was something to watch: the way Jared, who'd been wary and unsure, verging on standoffish the night he'd met Jeff, started to blossom the more people he met, the more casual conversations he was drawn into. His face relaxed, his smile widened, and it was as though he was re-learning the parts of himself he'd locked away when he'd lost everyone. Jeff's instinct had been right. Jared was a social creature, would thrive here, and it made him feel good that he'd brought Jared here. Because not only was Jared important, but this was _right_ for him. It helped assuage some of the guilt that sat dark and uncomfortable in his belly at not telling Jared what he'd sensed and why he'd brought him here. Not all of it, though.

"They had a guitar in the library, did you see?" Jared was saying, as they headed down the corridor towards the committee's wing. Jeff was going to show Jared the common room, let him stay there and hopefully make some friends, while Jeff went to the debriefing meeting. He wanted Jared to be part of the committee, if Jared wanted to be. At some point Jared was going to have to know that there was something about him that was important, but for the first meeting Jeff didn't want him to be there. Not yet.

"Yeah, I know," said Jeff, with a grin. "I remember when Katie brought that back. Guitar rights are pretty hotly contested."

"I started to learn last year, before-- but I kinda gave it up. Do you reckon I could start again?"

"Sure," said Jeff. "Sign up for lessons, the world's your oyster. Or, well. The Hill View Elementary's your oyster."

Jared grinned. "I'll take it. God, you know - not to knock your company, but it's kind of amazing to be able to talk to so many people. I hadn't realized how much I missed it. Everyone's so awesome."

"No offense taken," said Jeff, though he couldn't help adding, "Don't think you liked Jensen all that much, though."

Jared shot him a sharp look and Jeff looked away, feeling a little ashamed.

"Yeah, well," said Jared. "Guess that's just me making a big deal out of nothing." He shrugged. "Not like I have any right to be jealous. You must think it's pretty funny."

"Hey," Jeff said immediately, "no. Jared, look at me a moment."

They stopped in the empty corridor, and Jared turned to face Jeff with a stubbornly nonchalant expression.

"Jensen and I are just friends. Nothing else there at all."

Jared shrugged again, but his shoulders relaxed afterwards. "Not like it matters either way, right?" he said, then shook his head. "Sorry. I guess I'm being a bit - childish. I just--" He looked at Jeff with that same flash of vulnerability he'd shown the previous day, then looked away, face blank.

"Jared, wait," said Jeff, not sure what he was going to say, but hating Jared looking at him like that. "I don't - it's not nothing. What we - you know."

Jared's eyes flashed and he took two big steps towards Jeff, then, and Jeff was instantly aware all over again that Jared was taller than he was. It was an odd sensation.

"You say…you keep saying this is a bad idea, that we shouldn't, and I know I'm younger than you and I know we still don't know each other that well, and I know this is a crazy fucking time, but I still can't get _why_. Why it's such a bad idea. Jeff? Please. You gotta give me something."

 _Because I don't know what you are_ , thought Jeff, looking at the question in Jared's face, the size of him and the youth of him. He was just a scared survivor, trying to make something of the tatters his life had become, like everyone, but he was _something_ and Jeff couldn't--

_Because I don't know what you're going to have to do. Because I don't want to let you in and not be able to let you go when the word needs you._

"Because," he said, then swallowed, licked his lips, forced himself to meet Jared's eyes. "Because. Neither of us needs to lose anything else. And I don't know where my commitment to the resistance is going to take me. I don't want to hurt you. Or myself."

Jared kept eye contact, eyes big and pleading, then he blinked and looked away, jaw going tight, nodding silently. He took a step back, then frowned and took a bigger one back in, right into Jeff's space, like he was trying to crowd Jeff against the wall. Jeff let him, but pushed his chin forward, just letting Jared know that his couple inches on Jeff didn't mean he could push him around.

"You feel it, though, don't you?" said Jared, harshly, eyes dropping from Jeff's eyes to his mouth. He brought a hand up, spread his long fingers over Jeff's chest. "Come on, man, tell me you feel this."

 _Down to my fucking toes, kiddo._ Jeff said nothing, just looked at Jared, blinked slowly, let his gaze drop deliberately to Jared's mouth.

Jared made a frustrated growl in his throat, and surged forward, hands coming up to Jeff's shoulders and pushing him right up against the wall, mouth hot over Jeff's in an open-mouthed kiss, his smooth skin rasping over Jeff's beard.

Jeff let him for a moment, let him kiss out his frustration and anger, then brought his hands up to Jared's arms, gripped his biceps, and shoved.

Jared's face was open and surprised, mouth red, and he stumbled back across the narrow corridor; Jeff came with him, hands tight on Jared's arms, and this time he pushed Jared tight up against the wall. Jared grunted as his shoulders slammed into a noticeboard, an old class schedule fluttering to the floor.

Jeff didn't let Jared say anything before he stepped in close, boxing Jared in against the wall with his body and kissing him again. He could feel the fight drain from Jared, and he went lax, near melted against Jeff, hands settling on Jeff's hips and shoulders curving off the wall into Jeff, his mouth soft and pliant under Jeff's hard kiss.

Jeff growled in his throat, his belly hot and tight, wanting so badly to drag Jared right down to the floor and take him, let Jared arch his back and bare his throat like he so clearly wanted to do, and the feedback loop he was getting in the conduit at the back of his head - Jared's need to submit to Jeff, amping up Jeff's primal need to just take what was so willingly offered - made him crazy and dizzy.

He needed to stop this.

He dragged his mouth away from Jared, leaving a damp trail of kisses and hot little bites to Jared's jaw, his neck, then pulled away enough to rest his forehead against Jared's, their hot panting breath collecting in the space between their mouths.

"Jared," he said, and Jared made a little noise. "We - I can't. I feel it, okay. But I can't."

With that he dragged himself away, with willpower he didn't know he had, keeping a lid on everything with a control he remembered from the day everything had started, at the recital. He left Jared well-kissed and sagging against the wall, and went to his debriefing.

  


Jensen caught his arm as he was about to head into the conference room.

"Hey, whoa," said Jensen. "I'm not prying, but you're putting out a mess of stuff. You'll have half the ESPs in the room on edge, and the other half gossiping. Take a moment."

"Yeah," said Jeff, distractedly, then, "sorry. Shit!"

"Deep breaths. Clear your mind. Stare at the wall. You know this."

It was basic defense stuff when you might be dealing with hostile ESPs: calming your mind. Not clearing it or blocking it totally - that never worked and you were more likely to give away huge amounts in little bursts than if you just calmed yourself and gave away a little of everything. It became white noise and not all that helpful.

"Jared?" said Jensen quietly and sympathetically, and Jeff blew out a breath through his nose.

"Not helping," he said, and focused on breathing in and out.

"Sorry, man," said Jensen, and clapped a hand on Jeff's back. "See you in there."

A few minutes later Jeff felt marginally more composed and headed in.

The room was arranged with tables, with Genevieve, Jensen and Danneel sitting at the one at the front of the room, though otherwise there was no clear hierarchy. The committee was around twenty-five people, and Jeff nodded in greeting to a few, then went to where Jensen sat at the seat nearest the door. Jensen was able to sense a lot of things, but one of the clearest was deception: at a touch, he'd be able to tell if someone was here under false pretences, to gain information for the other side, basically. Jensen was their version of a security screening.

Jensen nodded as he tapped the back of Jeff's hand, under Gen's watchful eye, and Jeff took a seat.

The meeting started as normal: security detail gave their report, new arrivals were noted, and there was a debate for a while about whether a girl who Katie had brought back from a patrol last week, who had the ability to walk through walls, should be coaxed to join the committee or not. Katie said she was only sixteen, young and scared, and she'd do it in her own good time. Mark said that they needed to make sure sooner rather than later that she didn't get the wrong idea from the wrong people and end up using it for the wrong side, no matter how safe they thought she was here at the base.

"Stop it!" said Gen, loudly. "How many times do we have to remind ourselves? People are not their abilities. People are people. If Amie wants to join, she'll join, and I trust Katie's judgement. I'm moving things along. Jeff," she said.

"Yes ma'am."

She gave him a grin and a warning look. "You're way ahead of schedule to return - I was surprised when Jensen told me you were back already. Debrief?"

Jeff stood up, ran a hand through his hair, feeling uncharacteristically awkward. "Uh," he said. "Yeah. I ran into a guy a week or so back - saved his life, actually. I got a premonition that these guys were going to kill him, so - I killed them, and then I convinced him to come back with me."

There were a couple of raised eyebrows, Gen's included, and Jeff grinned wryly. "Yeah, I know. I'm not that trigger-happy, usually, and you all also know that I've sent more than one person back with directions, rather than bringing them back myself. But there's something different about this one." He tried not to flush - god, he was a grown man - nor let anything leak out about Jared beyond what was relevant, but he heard some rumbling, saw some people exchange looks.

He shook his head. "I don't know what it is, but Jared is special. And not just - I don't mean powerful, or useful, I mean, he is--" _everything_ , he nearly said. "He is absolutely crucial to the resistance, and I don't know how or why, yet, but I know I felt it stronger than any premonition I've ever felt. Like a crowbar to the head, and I had to kill the men threatening him, it was - every cell in my body was telling me I had to keep this kid alive and safe. Had to bring him back here."

There was a rise in the rumbling, and Gen put up her hand, stood up too. "Jeff, we're going to need a little more to go on. What's his power?"

Jeff hesitated. "That's what I don't understand. He's not powerful - he can, ah. Change the color of things."

Mark snickered quietly, and Jeff clenched his jaw.

"I know it's nothing special. And I don't - I don't know how he's going to be important. But I know he _is_ , and I--"

"Jeff's right," said Jensen, standing up as well. "I met Jared at breakfast, and I felt - look, premonition isn't my thing, not like Jeff. But there was something really powerful around him, something I couldn't put my finger on. And whatever it is, Jared has no idea." Jeff shot Jared a grateful look, but Jensen looked concerned as he sat back down.

Gen nodded. "Alright. Jeff, _important_ isn't much to go on, but - can we bring him in? Have Jensen and Allie have a look at him, see if we can tease any more information out?"

"I want to set up a security detail for him," said Jeff, baldly. "I can't be around him all day and I - he needs to be protected."

Gen frowned. "Jeff - that's a lot of manpower for one guy who can change the color of his socks. Are you sure you aren't letting any personal feelings color this?"

"It's not about that at all," said Jeff firmly, hoping it was true. Not sure if it was. "I want him protected for the same reasons I brought him here, nothing else. Because something about him tells the new part of my brain that has not been wrong once, that he is going to be the guy that decides the fate of our future. All of us. Every last one of us. And he needs to be protected like a goddamn _nuke_ in case the wrong people get hold of him."

Allie stood up, suddenly, nose in the air as though she was scenting it. "Jared?" she said. "The guy you were with in the library earlier?"

Jeff blinked at her. "Yeah, that's him."

She raised her eyebrows, and glanced at Gen and then Jeff almost apologetically. "He's standing outside, listening in."

Jeff was shoving the table away from himself even before she'd finished talking, nearly tripping over his feet and jamming his hip into the corner of the table as he ran for the door; he wrenched it open and Jared was walking away, his shoulders tense and angular in a way Jeff could read well enough even without the blaring noise of hot, roiling unease now flaring in the back of his head.

So much for his connection with Jared; it hadn't warned him soon enough to stop him putting his whole damn foot in his mouth.

"Jared!" he called. "Jared, come on, wait. Talk to me, dude."

Jared stopped, dropped his head, then turned to face Jeff. His mouth was tight and angry, but his eyes were hurt - no, god. Devastated would be a better word, if Jeff dealt in such dramatic terms. There was a cold trickling in his belly that was a nice match for the deep sucking sense of wrong at the back of his head, and he knew this was going nowhere good.

"Why were you eavesdropping?" said Jeff, helplessly. Like that was the problem here.

Jared crossed his arms, then dropped them to his sides. "I - " he laughed, short and sharp. "I was coming to see if I could be part of the committee. I was about to come in, and I heard you say my name. I was curious, so sue me." He flung his hands up in the air. "My momma always said that people who eavesdrop never hear anything good about themselves. Guess I proved her right."

"Jared - what I said--"

"I heard you, man, you don't gotta try and explain it away. I'm a nuke, right? That's all. A weapon for your precious resistance. I guess you fucked me just to make extra sure I'd fall in - I'd get attached to you and do anything you wanted me to. Yes Jeff, no, Jeff, yes of course you can point me at the bad guys and fire, oh, of course, Jeff, because I'd do anything. I'd have fucking done--"

He stopped, wound his hands into his hair and looked so fucking young and upset that Jeff couldn't breathe. Didn't know what to say to try and fix it.

He took a step forward, stopped when Jared flinched back. "They weren't listening to me, Jared. I had to. I had to make like it was just the premonition, but I do - you're not just that to me. You gotta listen to me, kiddo - everything's complicated, I can't--"

"Did, you," said Jared, flatly, "or did you not bring me back here because I'm important for the resistance."

"I--"

"When you were telling me that this place would be good for me, better than Texas, that I'd thrive here - did you mean it? Or was it just to get me to come back here so you could use me. Don't lie to me."

Jeff stared at Jared. "I'd met you the night before. All I was - you have no idea how strong it was. Like my head was going to come off if I didn't make you come with me."

Jared nodded, then looked away.

"I didn't _know_ you--"

"You say all this shit about how people aren't their abilities, but you sure as fuck didn't give a shit about me as a person, did you? You cared about what your ability said, not about what I said."

He brought his arm up, and Jeff jerked backwards, a flinch he flushed with shame over afterwards. Jared smiled grimly and gripped onto his own arm, and a pale blue color soaked through the sleeve of his dark jacket. He let go, the shape of his hand imprinted in pale blue on his sleeve. "I'm pretty sure you shot a dud. Sorry, man. But I'm useless. All that effort, man, all that work - you should get an Oscar. But I'm not your weapon. This is it, this is all I can do. I would've told you if there was more. Good to know you wouldn't have returned the favor."

Jared dropped his arm, the blue already fading, looked away and started to turn.

"Wait--" Jeff got out, the ache in his chest intensifying, and he got a wave of warning from his ability so strong that black spots danced in front of his vision and he had to reach out to steady himself on the wall, not sure which hurt more, and what was _him_ and what was his stupid premonition. "Don't - where are you gonna go?"

Jared wrapped his arms around his elbows, shoulders folding in. "I--"

"Don't leave. You like it here."

"I don't wanna stay. I was thinking I'll try going home. Like I was gonna."

Jared would get himself _killed_. Another wave. Jeff bit the inside of his cheek to focus. "Don't go right away. Please. Tomorrow. "

Jared turned his head enough to glance at Jeff.

"Jared, come on, just sleep on it. I know--" Jeff was short of breath. "I know you don't believe me, but I'm not - I don't see you as a weapon. And it's not why we - you're not just that to me. And I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I am. But you _are_ important. I'm not wrong. I just don't know why."

Jared looked away, and Jeff couldn't tell what he was thinking - his premonition, that demand to _keep him safe, don't let him leave_ was drowning out anything more subtle from Jared than anger and sadness.

"I'll stay tonight."

\--

Jeff went back to the conference room feeling numb.

"He's not happy," he said, when he went back in. "But he's staying. I'll talk to him tomorrow, give him a chance to calm down."

"He's--" started Jensen, sounding unsure. "He's pretty upset, Jeff. I didn't even get close to him, and I felt a whole lot of unhappiness emanating."

Gen frowned, then. "If he's as powerful as Jeff thinks, that can't be good news."

Jensen shook his head. "I don't think he'd be dangerous. I don't get that feeling, and if he was going to be, I reckon Jeff would know first of all. But I also think Jeff's right. We can't let him go anywhere."

Gen made a frustrated sound. "I wish one of you would tell me _why_ he's so powerful and important. To me the only thing he looks like he'd be any good at is a fashion advisor. I'd sure love to be able to turn this top any color I wanted."

Gen's irreverence and lack of sensitivity was usually something Jeff adored about her - god knows no-one needed bullshit in days like these, but he bit his tongue on snapping at her now.

Jensen shrugged. "With respect, the psychic stuff is harder to figure out than shooting flames out of your eyeballs. Most of us are still learning our way around it."

"Soon as anyone knows anything, you'd be the first to know," Jeff put in quickly, respecting the flames in question apparently more than Jensen did. "Look, I wish I knew too. But trust us for now."

Gen nodded sharply. "Fine. I'll hold a meeting with security tomorrow morning and get a detail on him. You watch him for now."

"If he'll let me anywhere near him," Jeff said, despondently.

"Oh suck it up, Jeff," said Gen. "You fucked up, go apologize, kiss and make up. I'm sure you can manage that if the fate of the world really does hang in the balance."

Jeff rubbed his hand over his mouth to stop from saying anything. He wanted to tell them that remembering how Jared had looked at him made him care distinctly less about the fate of the world and more about the person in question, and that wasn't a way to convince her he was being reasonable and unbiased about this.

"Yeah," he said, instead.

Jensen caught up with him outside once the meeting had been dismissed - more than a few curious looks from the others being sent Jeff's way.

"Hey," said Jensen, and cleared his throat awkwardly. "Look - it's not my place, but maybe it is, if you and I so far are the only ones to feel that Jared is important, somehow. But - from what I felt at breakfast, the kid is _crazy_ about you. And you're harder to read than he is, but I can tell there's something there. So I gotta ask, away from Gen, is this all about how important he is? I can feel it, but it's not end-of-the-world strong for me - because future prediction isn't my area, like yours. So is he really? Or is it some of what Gen said ? Does it feel this important to you because of - of how you feel about him?"

Jeff tried not to resent Jensen for the question, because no-one other than Jeff had felt it, that first night. The intensity of it, how keeping Jared safe felt like breathing. It was valid.

He looked around, then back at Jensen. "It's both." It was a relief, saying it aloud. "He's become--" Jeff coughed. "Important to me. But I could hate him, and I would still move heaven and earth to protect him. You know what the resistance is to me, Jensen, I wouldn't fuck around with this. We need him."

Jensen watched him, then touched Jeff's hand, nodding. "Yeah. I believe you. Not just because I can tell you aren't lying." He flashed a quick grin, then sobered. "But however much the world needs him, I think you do, too. Be careful with him - he's just a person, like anyone, and he's confused and hurting."

Jeff closed his eyes at the reminder. "Fuck. I know."

He found Jared later in the library, but didn't interrupt. He was sitting still, reading a book on guitars, and as long he was still here, that was the important thing. He could figure out how to try and fix it later. He made sure Amanda on library duty knew to find him if Jared went anywhere, and Jeff went to help out in the gardens. It was his favourite place to think.

He was informed when Jared left the library for the mess hall, and headed there himself. He saw Jared across the hall, kept a long, tense moment of eye contact, but nothing else; they ate separately and Jeff made sure Jared was watched over in the common room before he left to clean his guns in the weapons room. He'd been turning it over all day, and he still didn't know how to make this any better, because he'd fucked up pretty spectacularly. He should've told Jared the night he met him, should have told him at least before they'd fallen into bed together, because there was no way Jared could believe any word out of his stupid mouth, now, after overhearing the meeting. No reason for him to believe Jeff did it for any other reason than to keep Jared close and malleable.

And the bitch of it was, Jeff didn't know - or he did, but god, he didn't know one hundred percent if his own mind was tricking him - that what he felt for Jared wasn't totally unconnected to what he felt _about_ Jared. That his mind hadn't pointed him towards Jared and entangled them together just so Jeff had a very personal stake in the kid's survival. It was fucked, and scary, and Jeff hated his premonition for the first time. Why couldn't he have the flames? Shooting fire out of your eyes couldn't be this goddamn complicated.

He went to Kim to reassign his sleeping spot that night - he didn't think Jared would want Jeff next to him, not tonight, and he sort of hoped that a restful night would help the both of them to talk it through tomorrow. He cajoled Mike, who was in math that night, to keep an eye on Jared, and was on his own way up to geography in the adjacent corridor when he stopped.

Jared was lingering outside the geography classroom, the curve of his back against the wall, legs crossed at the ankle, head hanging down, fall of his hair hiding his face.

"Jared."

Jared startled a little, then straightened up, turned to Jeff with a determined weight to his stance, shoulders down and chin forward.

"Hey."

"How did you know I was here?"

Jared shrugged one shoulder. "Asked Kim. She likes me."

Jeff bit down a smile. "She likes everybody."

Jared opened his mouth as if to keep on their easy back and forth, already familiar, then shut up.

Jeff suppressed a sigh. "Jared, I--"

Jared shook his head. "No, just. Shut up a minute, alright. I don't wanna talk."

"What--" said Jeff, then did indeed shut up as Jared walked towards him, spearing him with a look. Hot, intent, and somewhere underneath it, scared and hoping. It did a number on Jeff's breathing.

"Jared," he tried again, because he wanted to get things clear, but he'd never been good with pretty words. And if Jared wanted him to let his body do the talking, there was a hot and instinctive part of him that wanted to show Jared so badly, not tell him. "I'm assigned to geography tonight," came out instead, inanely, and he tried not to let his cheeks burn. It was a valid point, though. The geography set up had even less privacy than the math room.

Jared held up a key, small and insignificant. "Asked Kim for a private room. Told you she liked me."

Jeff stared at it, glinting dully in the dimly lit corridor, belly gone liquid and hot at what it meant. That Jared had asked for it, he and Kim and anyone else there knowing what he wanted it for. Jared's hand wasn't steady, and Jeff decided Jared had done enough for tonight. It was in Jeff's hands now, and he closed his eyes a moment, let his body relax into it: the quickening of his heart, the heat in his belly, his all-over awareness of Jared in front of him, his size and warmth and scent, and how Jared was offering himself up.

He opened his eyes, stared at Jared, and took the key. "Take me there."

It was Jared's turn to close his eyes; there was relief in his face, and his shoulders dropped, mouth opening slightly. Jeff let himself look his fill at the soft pink curve of it, imagined biting at it; imagined rubbing the head of his dick over it ‘til it was shiny with his precome.

Jared led him up one floor to the storage closet on the English corridor; they didn't meet anyone on the way, but they didn't touch, walking next to each other, tension humming between them. Jeff could hear Jared's rough breathing across the space between them, felt the trip-hammer of his own heart, and when Jared led to them to the door, Jeff took two tries to unlock it, thoroughly distracted by Jared stepping up behind him, one tentative hand on his hip. The scent of him and sounds of his breathing confirmed the hot, anxious desire Jared was unknowingly projecting in red waves through their connection, setting Jeff's brain alight with heat licking up from the back of his skull, making him feel dizzy.

"Gimme some space, kiddo," he growled, and god, he _felt_ the spike from Jared at the endearment, not to mention to convulsive tightening of Jared's hand on his hip before he stepped back to let Jeff wrench the door open and lead them inside.

It wasn't anything fancy - it had been stripped of its contents, but it was still clearly a storage cupboard, shelves on the walls and a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. But there was a fairly thick mattress laid down on the floor, just enough space for a double, with clean covers, and a discreet box at the back of the room with condoms and lube and, in some of the rooms, sex toys.

Where you find humans, you'll find sex. Not that Jeff could judge, his own dick a thick stiff line, throbbing hot and urgent between his legs.

"Romantic," breathed Jared, amused, then pressed his mouth tight like he hadn't meant to speak.

Jeff had to try again, even with the enclosed space and the sweat-hot scent of Jared clear and enticing and turning him on something fierce.

"Jared - come on," he said.

Jared just shook his head. "I don't wanna talk. I'm done with talking, I'm done with _thinking_ \- I just - can you--?"

He reached out and grabbed Jeff's hand, dragged it up and placed it on the back of his neck. Jeff squeezed lightly on instinct, and Jared's eyes closed, his breath shivering out of him, head dropping down in submission, and the soft tickle of his hair moving over the back of Jeff's hands. He took two steps forward, and Jeff pulled him the rest of the way, his tall, lean body curved down into Jeff's, his face tucked into Jeff's neck and Jeff feeling big and broad against him, his fingers rubbing gently over the soft hot skin of Jared's neck.

His premonition went quiet, calmed by Jared being in the safest place he could be: right here, held by Jeff.

Jared's breath was hot on Jeff's neck, and Jeff felt like he wanted to - to do _everything_ to Jared, break him apart and put him back together and make sure he never left this room, fuck the resistance if the two of them could stay here. He moved his head, nudged his nose at Jared's temple and Jared moved too, their mouths sliding hot and wet and open together.

Jared's kiss was so warm and sweet, the gentle give of his lips making Jeff's belly twist hotly. Jeff growled, moved them; one hand still on the back of Jared's neck, the other taking his hip, twisting them and bringing them down to lay Jared on his back on the mattress.

Jared's hair spread out on the flat mattress, eyes wide and fixed on Jeff, and Jeff wanted to say something, but Jared had said he was done talking, and maybe this was better. He braced himself on his elbows above Jared, and just watched his face for a long few moments, traced the shape of him, until Jared tightened his jaw and awkwardly slid his eyes away from Jeff's intent gaze, arching slightly and offering up his throat.

Jeff moved his hands in, cupped Jared's head, ran his thumbs along the side of Jared's face and leaned down, licked the point of his tongue from the soft hollow at the bottom of Jared's neck, all the way up the long line of him, the ridges of his throat, the thin skin under his jaw and the rapidly beating pulse there, then set his teeth over the strong line of Jared's jaw, bit gently; then kissed, kissed his mouth, back down his neck, sucking wet kisses bringing a flush of blood to the skin and making Jared cut off breathless sounds in his throat.

He nuzzled the dip of Jared's collarbones, then sat up, knees either side of Jared's hips, tugged his own shirt off and grabbed at Jared's arms, hauled him up enough to pull off his own shirt, then pushed him roughly back down. He dropped his head low to run his mouth all the way down Jared's chest, the rasp of his beard and drag of his lips bumping over the defined muscles of Jared's chest and stomach, silky soft skin over the hardness of him. He bit at the softer part of Jared's belly under his navel until it hardened flat as Jared tensed, wriggling under Jeff's touches.

Jared made a pleading noise, hips shifting, the ridge of his dick in his jeans a hard, obvious curve knocking Jeff's chin. He glanced up at Jared, wordlessly telling him to settle, and Jared sucked in a restless breath, dropped his head back onto the mattress, hands clenched by his sides and hips stilling.

Jeff tugged at Jared's jeans, deftly pulling down his fly. Jared tossed his head and whined low in his throat and Jeff coaxed his dick out, wrapped his fingers around the swollen head.

He hadn't gotten a good look at it before. Jared had a gorgeous dick, thick and long, wet and flushed at the head, twitching responsively in Jeff's hand. He closed his eyes and breathed in deep, the thick sharp smell of it making his mouth water. He pursed his lips, kissed the head of Jared's cock softly, then wriggled his tongue right into the slit, Jared hissing and his legs jolting as he spilled a salty smear of precome right onto Jeff's tongue.

Jared's hands were opening and closing fitfully at this sides, so Jeff took one, brought it to his face, coaxed Jared to cup Jeff's face; then took Jared in deep, letting Jared's fingers feel the shape of himself through the bristly side of Jeff's face as Jared’s cockhead pressed it out.

Jared tasted incredible, fresh and sharp, and Jeff closed his eyes at the bliss of it, the feel of another man heavy on his tongue, the tense fidgeting of a body underneath him that was flooded with pleasure from Jeff's own mouth, the harsh breaths and noises Jared was trying to catch.

He sucked Jared deep, let Jared's dick bump right up against the back of his throat, fluttered around him and swallowed; then pulled off with a long, slow suck, Jared's cock bobbing free, shiny and red.

Jared was red faced and dazed, propped up on his elbow, watching Jeff lean back down to rub his swollen slick lips over Jared's balls, and then Jared moaned, low and breathless, legs opening wider, needy and eager, as Jeff licked over the fat swell of Jared's balls then below.

Jared made a noise like a sob as Jeff licked hard over the furled knot of Jared's hole, legs tensing like he didn't know whether to spread them wide or clamp them around Jeff to pull him in deeper. Jared was so fucking eager, responsive, gorgeous in his unbridled need, and it made Jeff's head roar, thick and dizzy with lust and a giddy sense of luck that he was allowed this, that he was getting this, getting to make Jared feel like this.

He wriggled his tongue right at the center, feeling Jared open up sweetly for him - like he'd thought. His rubbed his finger right up alongside his tongue, getting it wet and messy, then pushing in, Jared letting him in with a groan, hot and sinfully tight, sucking him in like he was desperate.

He rubbed the fingers of his other hand over Jared's balls, still slippery from spit from the blowjob, and he could feel the weight of them, the twitches as Jared's cock leaped and leaked all over his stomach, then Jared's hand was at his face again, urging him up, this time.

Jeff almost moaned to leave Jared's hole, feeling like he could eat him out all night until his jaw cramped, make the kid blow his load just on Jeff's tongue - but he also wanted to feel Jared on his dick.

Jared's eyes were wide and dark, and Jeff nodded when they looked at each other wordlessly.

He worked his way back up Jared's body, going straight for his mouth. Jared didn't shy away from the taste of himself, just grabbed at Jeff's head and kissed him hard, tongue sliding deep into Jeff's mouth.

Jared fumbled above his head for the box; Jeff knocked his hand aside and got it himself, sitting back on his knees to open it and get a condom and lube. He put them on the shelf, chucked the box back toward the far side of the room, then stood up enough to tug off his own pants, cock slapping up stiff and flushed rosy against his belly. Jared's eyes went to it straight away, lip caught between his teeth in an unconscious way that made him look coy and wanton. God. Jeff got back down onto his knees over Jared, wrested Jared's jeans all the way off; then, in a move that he was pretty pleased with in the confined space, got them flipped on the mattress, Jeff on his back and Jared astride him.

Jared looked confused for a second, mouth open, face half lit by the bare bulb, so Jeff grabbed his narrow hips, tugged him up so Jeff's dick nudged up against his ass, and rolled his hips, a sinuous motion that slipped his dick in between Jared's ass cheeks. Jared picked it up, hips rolling along with Jeff's. _Ride me, kiddo_.

Jared dropped his head back, pushing his ass down into the shove of Jeff's dick, and his own cock flexed and dribbled against his belly. Jeff rubbed his thumbs in big encouraging circles on the sharp jut of Jared's hipbones, and Jared lifted his head, looked down at Jeff, and grabbed the condom and lube from the shelf. He dropped the condom on Jeff's chest, and lifted himself up, Jeff's cock sliding slickly between his legs to jut up. Jared's thighs were long and gorgeous, muscles shifting, and he opened the tube, got his fingers slicked up and reached behind himself.

It was an unbelievable sight, Jared's shoulder and thighs flexing as he opened himself up, his face going soft and open, eyes half closed as he fingered himself. His brow creased in little flinches as he stretched, and Jeff wished he could psychically project himself, go behind Jared and see it, see Jared's long slim fingers sliding up inside his slick, greedy hole, getting him all ready for Jeff's cock.

Jared opened his eyes, looked at the condom and then at Jeff, a pointed reminder. Jeff groaned and tore it open, rolled it down his cock with clumsy fingers. Jared watched it, eyes falling to the way Jeff's cock gleamed, rubber tight and shiny in the harsh lighting, then closed his eyes and moaned quietly as his shoulder moved again. Like he was going deep.

Jeff took the tube from Jared's other hand, and lubed up his dick, the feel of his fingers rubbing slippery along the condom making him hiss and rock his hips upwards in a surge he couldn't help, eyes closing tight and pressing his head back.

When he opened his eyes, Jared was looking at him, and nodded. Licking his lips, Jeff kept looking at Jared, and took hold of his dick, urged Jared forward a little with his other hand, and Jared shifted his hips down until the head of Jeff's cock was snubbed up against his hole. Jeff could feel him, slippery and opened, but it would still be tight. It took a moment of pushing, Jared working himself down and Jeff slowly pressing in, before the initial resistance gave and the fat head of Jeff's cock slipped in, blazing heat and tightness making him feel almost dizzy.

There was a crease of discomfort between Jared's eyebrows, but he tightened his jaw and kept going, bearing down and dropping slowly, taking Jeff tight but sweet, so fucking hot, until Jeff was snugged right the way in, the curve of Jared's ass soft on his hips.

Jeff blew out a harsh breath, body thrumming all over with the _feel_ of it, surrounded by Jared, and they stayed still a moment, Jared getting used to it, Jeff waiting for him to reach that place where he wanted to _move_.

There it was - Jared gritted his teeth and moaned through them, body shuddering, and he braced himself with his hands on the shelves on the wall either side of them, used that and the strength of his long legs to lift himself up and rock back down.

He rode Jeff slow at first, and the drag of Jeff's cock as it left Jared's body and then as Jared forced it back in was unbearable - so fucking good, so slow. Jared was gorgeous, picking up speed, his head arched back and a pink flush spread down his neck and into his chest, the exquisite lines of him gleaming with sweat.

Jeff could have gotten there, could have let Jared take them all the way; but Jared tipped his head forward, looked at Jeff with this face lost in pleasure, like Jeff was everything, and Jeff couldn't just lie there any longer, had to take control; had to show Jared, had to _fuck_ him.

He hauled himself upright, one arm catching Jared sure and strong around his back, keeping Jared cupped in his lap, keeping his dick rooted inside him. He grabbed onto the shelf on his right with his other arm, his hand next to Jared's, and Jared tilted forward to kiss him, little bites at Jeff's bottom lip until Jeff growled and kissed him deeply, sucking Jared's tongue into his mouth until Jared relaxed into him, tension leaving his thighs, sinking him deeper onto Jeff's dick.

Jeff tipped them over the rest of the way, until Jared was lying on his back on the mattress, head toward the door. Jared's legs came up around Jeff's waist, ankles crossed almost shyly around Jeff's lower back, and Jeff started to fuck him, slow rolling thrusts of his hips, punching a little breath out of Jared on each one. He kept it slow, slower than his body was desperate for, slower than he knew Jared wanted it, waiting for--

Jared pushed his hips up in frustration, opening his mouth on almost a snarl, cramming himself onto Jeff's dick harder, and Jeff smiled, slowly, showing his teeth. _You want it harder?_

Jared curled up into Jeff, face pressed into his neck, fingernails cruelly sharp points in Jeff's shoulders. _Fuck me_

Jeff let go - let his body pound into Jared, screw him fast and hard, the mattress skidding an inch or two on the floor. Jared's eyes drifted half closed and his mouth was red and open, moaning out wordless cries of pleasure each time Jeff's dick fucked into him deep and hard, his legs scrabbling at Jeff's side to wrap them tighter and higher, to get Jeff deeper.

Jeff dropped his head, this time his turn to tuck his face into Jared's neck, one hand braced on the mattress and the other winding into Jared's hair, petting clumsily at it as he fucked him; god, _Jared_ ; wanting Jared to hear him, to know what he was saying, that it wasn't about the weapon or the fight or - or anything, it - it was _him_.

Jared tensed up, breath coming in panicky sounding gasps, and he clung to Jeff with both arms, his dick rubbing up between them, skidding over the hair on Jeff's chest and belly. Jeff felt him come, the clench of his body, a glorious pulse around Jeff's cock, before he felt it on his skin, spattering in wet lines between them, messy and gorgeous.

Jared was beautiful as he was coming apart, his face twisted in pleasure, his body hot and gorgeous all over Jeff, all around him, and Jeff felt, felt _full_ , his chest stuffed with things he didn't know how to say and would probably fuck up if he did. He grunted, screwed his eyes tight shut, hid himself in the sweaty hollow of Jared's neck, and let his own orgasm rush over him, a hot, wrenching release, his cock fattening and shooting inside Jared, tight pulses of come inside the condom. He fucked Jared through it, Jared whimpering softly at each thrust, his cock still big and sticky, lolling against his thigh.

Jeff held himself still inside Jared for a long moment, clinging onto the last vestiges of the mindless pleasure of his orgasm, until he started to go soft. He reached down to slowly and carefully pull himself out of Jared, making them both shiver, then Jared's legs flopped down to the mattress and Jeff slipped off the messy condom and tied it off, chucked it in a corner. He fell face forward onto the mattress, shoulder jammed up next to Jared's as they lay there, breathing hard for a few long, hot minutes.

Sweat was collecting in the dip of Jeff's spine, but he couldn't move, not just yet, his body humming all over, singing with the slippery wet, hot touch of Jared's skin against his. The small room was too hot; even as Jeff came down from his high, his skin didn't cool, and sweat was damp across his brow, gleaming on Jared's face when Jared shifted so they were facing each other.

"If I stayed," said Jared suddenly, the words sounding wrong in the quiet, after they'd said nothing since their first kiss here, and Jeff tensed up. _If_.

Jared cleared his throat, glanced at Jeff then away. "If I stayed. It's my choice, isn't it?"

"Of course it's your choice, Jared," said Jeff, voice rough and low. "I can't stop you leaving. But--"

"No," said Jared, frustrated. "I mean. It's my choice if I want to become - involved in the resistance. Forgetting - forgetting about what you think you can sense about me. If I don't want to be a part of it - if I just want to make a life here and not be a part of the resistance at all - you'd let me. It's my choice."

 _Of course_ , Jeff wanted to say to him. _I'd never force you into doing anything you didn't want to do. I'd cut off my own arm before I'd make you do that. I'd give up anything before I had to make you unhappy._

He opened his mouth, then shut it again. He looked at Jared - the changing color of his eyes, the pink flush of sex still smeared over his sharp cheekbones, the uncertain pull of his mouth - and felt it again, so hard he had to swallow a noise. _You're something no-one will have seen before. You're going to save us all and if you don't, we're so, so fucked._ Real fear at the thought of Jared turning away from it was a dark, cold fist in his gut.

Instead he said, "I know you don't believe it, but--"

Jared's face shuttered instantly, and he twisted to lie on his back, staring blankly up.

Jeff made a frustrated noise in his throat. "Of course, of course it's your choice, Jared, but - you don't know how this feels. It's like an icepick in my brain; it's something I know as well as I my own damn name. You're _so important_ and I don't know why, I can't tell you any more than that, but if you don't, if you ignore it - it scares me. This is--" He hesitated. "This is fate -of-the-world stuff, kiddo. I wouldn't tell you this if it were any different."

Jared sat up abruptly, the gorgeous line of his back gleaming in the yellowy light as he sat forward, braced his elbows on his raised knees, and stared away from Jeff. 

"You can't lay that on me," he said fiercely. "You can't. You can't tell me I'm some savior of the word and I have no choice, that you won't even give me a choice. Like you can't trust me enough to make that choice." He started to stand up, then, and Jeff's chest went tight at the same time the alarm throbbed at the back of his head.

He hefted himself up to his elbows, aware of his nakedness as Jared started to cover his own. "Come on - I'm sorry, I am, but you gotta understand. Come on, kiddo--"

Jared pulled on his pants, then lashed out, hit the side of a shelf with his fist. It juddered off its flimsy holder and clattered to the floor, half landing on Jeff's ankle.

"Don't do that," said Jared angrily, still not looking at Jeff. "You can't use that voice on me like - like I'm just going to fall right back next to you." His body was held tight and tense like he wanted to do just that. The scent of the sweat and sex was starting to turn stuffy and rank, like their tension was turning it sour, spoiled like milk.

Jeff clenched his jaw against a hundred endearments he wanted to pour out if it would make Jared want to stay. "Sorry. Just - don't go. Not tonight."

Jared laughed harshly. "Where am I gonna go in the middle of the night? Don't worry, your nuke isn't escaping."

"Stop it!" said Jeff, louder than he intended, and Jared finally looked at him, eyes wide. "Stop saying that. You are not. Just a weapon to me."

Jared licked his lips, kept looking at Jeff. "But I'm not just a guy, either."

Jeff looked away, and Jared took his shirt and left.

  


Jeff slept fitfully, not wanting to go after Jared, not wanting to leave this room that smelled of them, not wanting to sleep in it, either. His head ached fiercely all night, waves of dark ugly pain spreading out from their connection, from whatever new biology had sprung up there during the event, bugging him with a knowledge that he goddamn _knew_ already. Yes, he knew Jared was going to be important; yes, he knew Jared wasn't here being kept safe by him. It could quit screaming that at him all night. He was sick of it, wanted to scrape it out from the base of his skull with a spoon, wanted to stop having to worry about this uncontrollable sense that he'd never asked for.

He was starting to get how Jared felt. _Why me?_ was a whine that never got anyone very far, but god, sometimes it was all you could think.

He didn't get as far as breakfast, once he left the room - Gen came storming up to him outside the mess hall, Kim hovering unhappily behind her.

"He's gone, Jeff! I thought you were keeping a goddamn eye on him - you were the one insisting we get a security detail on him, and you let him walk out on your watch. Bang up job on protecting our alleged last chance, there."

Jeff went cold all over. His head gave a particularly vicious throb, as if to say, _see! Told you I was trying to warn you_. He'd thought it had just been the regular feeling of having Jared out of sight. Apparently it had been more warning that just that. Jeff felt dizzy for a moment, surprise and sleeplessness and pain, and Gen caught his arm, face going from anger to concern. "Shit, you okay? Come on, let's get you to the med room--"

"No, " said Jeff, blinking hard, getting himself back under control. A sort of calm was coming over him, a hyper-focus clarity. "No, I'm good. I'm sorry, I wasn't watching him all night. I thought he was staying. He said--" He shook his head. "Not important now - we need to know where he is and get him back."

Kim stepped in. "He signed out at four AM. I'm sorry, Jeff - I wasn't on shift, Alex was. But even if I had been, you know we can't stop people leaving. It's kind of our whole point."

It looked like Jared had exercised his choice after all. Jeff didn't care. He was getting Jared back, and he knew - as strongly as he knew Jared was important, but this came from the senses he'd always had - that it was because he selfishly _wanted_ Jared safe, exactly as much as the urging of his premonition.

"We need a team," he said without preamble. "Emergency recovery mission. We can't let him just go. He's too important to the resistance - and, yeah, he's too important to me, but I wouldn't ask you to use resistance resources if it was just that. Gen, you know me. Jensen can vouch."

Gen looked unconvinced. Jeff worked his jaw. "Look, if I feel it this strongly, and Jensen feels some of it, then maybe the psychic eyes the coalition keep on this place - and we know they do - have sensed it too. Or maybe they've just sensed me thinking he's important. Either way, he's not safe out there on his own, and not just as unsafe as anyone wandering around on their own. They could take him. Try and figure him out. And you know they wouldn't be as nice as we would." The reality of that possibility only fully occurred to him as he was telling Gen, and fear curdled in his belly. He ignored it ruthlessly. Fear wouldn't help right now.

Gen sighed, scrubbed a hand over her eyes, then nodded. "Yeah, yeah, play the poor innocent teenager out on his own card. You know my secret soft side. Okay, you can have a mission team."

"He's - not a teenager," Jeff felt awkwardly compelled to point out.

Gen smirked at him. "Good to know you're not that much of a pervert. Look, I'm with you. Katie can run this place a few days, and I can be your offense arm. I can spare Jensen for your ESP arm - who else?"

Gen was treating this like a full mission. Each mission team had an arm, offence, defence, ESP and surveillance, covered by someone with the right ability. Jeff nodded in gratitude.

"I'll come," said Kim, eagerly. "I'm new to resistance action, I know, but I want to help. I can be the surveillance arm." Kim's ability was astral projection. She could send a mental projection of herself out for miles, seeing and hearing, undetected. She also had mild telekinesis but, she always said sheepishly, not good for much apart from making things vibrate a little bit. She said she'd make a killer cocktail waitress. Shaken, not stirred.

Jeff looked at her, again feeling that gratitude he had when he'd come in to the school two days before and understanding it, now. He smiled at her. "Thank you."

Then he looked at Gen. "I'll be defense. Now we can go." Gen gave him a skeptical face. "I know, I don't have forcefields or anything fancy, but I can't think of anyone with defense ability that I know well enough to drag out on this mission in the next ten minutes, so we'll manage it."

"Okay," said Gen after a moment. "Okay, give me fifteen - I need to brief Katie and grab Jensen. Then I'll meet you. Get your guns, packs, three days worth of food. If it takes us more than three days we’ll need to regroup anyway." She turned to go, then turned back and grabbed Jeff's arm. "I'm trusting you on this, Jeff. You haven't let me down yet, you're one of the best and most committed we have, but this is a risk to all of us and the whole resistance. Don't let this be for nothing."

Jeff suppressed the urge to salute. "It's not. I swear." The warning in his head was still shocking out little flares of sensation, but it wasn't pain, like the action to get Jared back was pacifying it, and it felt near encouraging for once. Like it was going in the right direction. They were going to get him back.

\--

It was less than fifteen minutes later that they left the base, and even that was long enough for Jeff to feel the edges of panic, palms sweating as he tightened the straps of his pack.

"We gotta go," he said, the delay making the buzzing in his head loud, near unbearable. "They probably have him already."

Kim shot him a glance. "Don't get yourself worked up. If he is, we'll get him back. You're no good to anyone panicking."

"I know," said Jeff, and he did know, but it was hard to take the advice. It helped once they were on the road, setting a quick pace.

"Anything?" said Jeff, after they'd been waiting in silence a while; Jensen had his feelers out trying to sense Jared's presence, and Kim had sent three or four projections up and out to scan the area, sight and sound.

They both shook their heads.

"There's traces of him," said Jensen doubtfully, "but only an echo. He was around here, but he isn't now."

"That's something," said Gen, hand on her gun. "Shows he came this way."

"There're signs of a struggle a ways south," said Kim, eyes distant as she focused on her projection's input. "Some scuffed earth that's fresh and a broken fence, but you know - signs of struggle is kind of the norm these days. Plus Alexis reported biker sightings through here a few days ago, so it could just be them causing chaos."

"Or it could be that the bikers got him," said Jeff, frustrated.

"Let's head to the struggle," said Jensen. "Maybe I can pick up some more echoes."

It was about a mile south, the road that led toward LA, though also the direct way to Texas. When they arrived, Jensen sucked in a breath, face drawn, and Jeff swallowed hard.

"He was here?"

Jensen nodded. "Yeah, he was. And--" he glanced apologetically at Jeff. "Scared. And there's something else - someone else here. Not familiar to me, but strong. Psychically strong. They've left a stamp here, though it's smart enough not to tell me anything more than that."

"But we can infer," said Gen. "coalition psychic spies."

"Shit," Jeff said, pacing. "Shit, shit." He knew this would happen, and he let Jared out of his sight - if he'd kept an eye on him, or, _fuck_ , if he'd been honest with him in the first place, Jared wouldn't have left, wouldn't have walked right into the sprung trap of the very people who'd want to take him, study him. Or kill him. It was all his--

No. Beating himself up was indulgent and pointless and not going to get Jared back.

He stopped and straightened his shoulders. "They'll have taken him to their headquarters. LA."

Kim bit her lip, looking sceptical. "That's - days and days' trek away."

Jeff glanced at the road. "Not if we get ourselves some transportation."

There were black rubber skids on the pavement, and Jeff dropped to his knees, rubbed a finger over it and sniffed. Fresh. Bikers had been this way too, not that long ago, though probably before Jared had been here.

"I've ridden a biker's vehicle before."

"What the fuck? When?" demanded Gen, but Jeff ignored her, a plan rapidly forming. He looked south. "The bikers went that way. We head this way, and Jensen, you put out psychic calls. They're pretty susceptible - we'll draw them to us."

"Dude," said Jensen. "They're unhinged and unreliable and dangerous, and you want to call them to us?"

"Trust me," said Jeff, firmly, and Jensen just looked at Genevieve.

She studied Jeff for a moment, then dropped her shoulders. "Fine. God. You better not let me down, Morgan."

It turned out they didn't need to call the bikers to them; they came across them twenty minutes later. Or rather, just one. They saw a loose circle of the intimidating hulking vehicles, a patchwork of chrome and rubber and dust and tarnish, clumped together in a destroyed gas station, and for a moment, Jeff thought the vehicles were abandoned, until he saw a figure huddled on the floor in the center. He was a biker, clear from the way the bikes idled close around him, and the chrome and chains and grease he'd decorated his body with, but he wasn't a roaring, maniacal tornado like Jeff had run into before. He was just sitting quietly, head down.

"What do we do?" whispered Kim. They were sneaking up on him, in plain sight in the middle of the road, but he hadn't noticed them yet, somehow - preoccupied.

"Jensen, can you put him in a freezehold? Kim, can you help hold him back with a projection? If we need to," said Genevieve, eyeing the biker cautiously. The other two nodded, though Kim looked wary - she could give her projections strength and physicality, and they couldn't be harmed in return, but it took a lot of focus. Then Gen nodded at Jeff.

"Hey," Jeff yelled. "You!"

The guy started, and it passed through to the vehicles surrounding him; their engines revved and wheels twitched.

He stood up, a sinuous fast motion, and leaped as though to get on his bike, presumably to spin away.

"Hold it!" yelled Jeff, and Jensen sent a wave of power at him, a psychic freeze wave that paralyzed him for a second, then Kim's ghostly projection dashed across the concrete and held the guy back from getting on his bike as he snarled and spat.

"Lemme go!" he said - it was odd to hear him speak. Usually the bikers kept to themselves, just laughed and hissed at outsiders. Jeff marvelled again at the phenomenon of them; as though their connection made them feel more machine, more engine than human.

"Where are the rest of you?" Jeff said, and the guy struggled harder for a moment before sagging back against the large bulging chrome fender of his bike. It purred at him, as though comforting.

"Gone."

"Gone where?"

He just snarled again and the bikes around him revved and trembled, and Jeff could imagine all too clearly him and his team being crushed to a messy death by these behemoths.

"We're not here to hurt you! I swear. I think - correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you're not the animal people think, and that we might have a common enemy."

The guy bared his teeth, then dropped his head. His voice was rough, catching like the grind of a dry gearbox, but audible.

"They took 'em. My team. My family. Left us alone." He looked around at his bikes.

"The guys in LA--" started Jeff, and the guy snarled again.

"They were _strong_. We couldn't drive away. They missed me. Wish they'd taken me too."

"They took one of ours, too," said Jeff. "Our family. We're gonna stop them. They're taking a lot of people. We're going to stop them - but we're far away and we need to get there quick. Can we have your bikes?"

The guy jolted hard, then made as if to lunge at Jeff, and Jeff saw Kim's hands clench white knuckled as her projection struggled to hold him back. Genevieve was staring at him as though he was crazy, which he figured was fair enough. No-one took a biker's bike.

"Listen to me!" Jeff commanded. "Your bikes know where your family is. Don't they? They can take us there. If they'll let us ride. And once we get there, they can stay or they can come back to you, we're not going to take them away, too."

There was silence, then. Jeff's words rang loud in the still morning air, the sun creeping towards noon, and the guy licked his lips, darted his bright eyes at each of them in turn, then to his bikes.

He snorted. "Take Karn. The big'un. He'll see you right. Right to 'em. Take 'em down."

\--

"Okay," yelled Jensen, when they were speeding down the highway. "Now I see how you were a lawyer in your previous life. Jesus."

Jeff grinned, thighs clamped to the wide leather seat at the top. His hand were on the twisted, beautiful handlebars but he wasn't steering - the bike was doing all that. It was letting them ride - Jeff on the driver's seat, the other three slotted in around him on small leather saddle seats and sturdy chrome handles that Jeff could've sworn weren't there the first time he looked at the vehicle. It was huge, four wheeled like a quad bike, but breath-stealingly fast and nimble, taking them through the car-choked roads with an ease and daring that made Kim squeak and declare she had to shut her eyes before she threw up.

The speed was unbelievable, even with the blocked roads, but it still wasn't fast enough for Jeff. The coalition had had Jared for way too long already, and without a transporter it was would still take them hours to get there, especially as the roads would only become more clogged with cars the closer they got to L.A .

Except about a hour out, by Jeff's estimate, the roads cleared. The bike soared cheerfully down the center of it, picking up speed so quickly that the g-force had Jeff gasping, now that it had a clear shot. Even as he welcomed the pace, the clear roads were ominous. Creepy, even, and a glance back at the others and a conversation in raised eyebrows and apprehensive looks confirmed it.

Jensen was moving, carefully clambering up off his seat and over towards Jeff, fingers white knuckled on knob of chrome as he leaned in enough to be heard.

"They got psychic eyes on us," he yelled over the rushing wind. "For a while now. Not strong, and not physically near us, but they are definitely watching, and hanging back for some reason."

Jeff nodded, and Jensen clambered back down. Jeff wasn't surprised. The coalition had tabs on the whole resistance base, and had probably been watching them since they'd left. He didn't know why they were holding back and letting them come close, but he didn't much care. If they attacked, he'd rather they do it where they had a chance to get in and rescue Jared, futile as this all seemed against the other side's power. They had power, too, and there was something to be said for being the underdog.

 _They always win in the movies_ , he could hear Jared say.

He firmed his grip on the handlebars, his watering eyes narrowed against the wind, and urged the bike silently faster.

It grew creepier as he as they got into the city proper, the bike  
knowing where it was going, or hopefully, anyway. No-one was around, which was normal, but there were no cars, no garbage, no debris, no signs of life or signs of death. It was like a model city, clean and neat, all the better to cover up the rancid corruption building underneath.

The L.A. roads felt starkly unfamiliar, empty as they were - so much light and clear air and silence, where L.A. - the one Jeff had known - had always been noise and dirt and exhaust fumes and overspilling unshakable life.

The bike slowed as it took a jerking left turn down a wide, pretty boulevard, and Jeff could get his breath now that the air wasn't whipping past him before he could get a deep lungful.

"You do realize," he heard Kim yell from behind his left shoulder, "that this is almost certainly a trap? I know I'm not the only one can feel them watching us."

"So?" Gen shouted back. "What, we gonna turn around and go home? We're committed now."

The bike took another couple jerking turns, left, right, hurtled through an intersection and screeched around a corner, then screamed to a halt, vibrating so hard underneath them that Jeff's teeth felt like they could rattle out of his head.

"We here?" he asked no-one in particular. The bike gave a shudder, a snorting noise and gust of black exhaust emanated from its belly.

"Take that as a yes," he said, and climbed off, then helped the others down.

It was silent as they stood there, stretched out their stiff legs, and then suddenly, the bike revved and shot off, front wheels rising off the road for a dizzying few moments before it disappeared in a roaring rush.

They looked around. "Where are we?" whispered Jensen. It was so quiet. The only sound was the burbling of a small fountain in a square paved courtyard to their right, surrounded by small buildings that looked like they used to be cafes, except for a towering all-glass office building directly across from them, incongruously tall and ominous.

They looked at each other. "It's so quiet," said Gen. "Can't help thinking this is the calm before the storm."

"If it is," said Jeff, grimly, "then let me thank you all in advance. I--"

The tall glass door of the building on the opposite side of the square opened.

  


When Jared had woken up the first time, his immediate thought was that he had truly awoken, from the most intense and vivid dream he could ever remember having. He smiled to himself, thinking of telling Aldis about it, because seriously: he should go into screenwriting with ideas like this in his brain. He blinked, groggy, and he didn't recognize where he was, but it was clean and open: wide sidewalks, fresh flowers, a pleasant paved courtyard arranged around a circular fountain with a bronze cherub statue. Nothing like the world in his dream.

It didn't last long. His thudding headache made itself known at the same time a rough hand grabbed a hold of his chin, and he realized his hands were tied behind his back and he was being frogmarched through the courtyard, feet dragging loosely on the floor and two incredibly strong people pulling him along. They'd stopped, presumably upon his waking, and a guy in a dark suit was standing in front of them, yanking Jared's head up, forcing eye contact.

It was the deep, uncomfortable prickle that rocketed through his brain and sizzled sharply down his spine when the guy looked him in the eye that made him wake up the rest of the way, and realize that this wasn't a dream. Clean streets and pretty flowers aside, this was still the world he was knocked out of - he remembered that now - and this guy was a powerful psychic. His power felt like fingers, digging in deep and wriggling into Jared's mind, the soft underbelly of his psyche, and it made Jared feel nauseated and dizzy.

The guy blinked then, and the awful sensation faded, but Jared's head still ached fiercely and there was nothing comforting about this guy's smile.

"Hello, wonder boy," he said, sardonically. "Alleged, anyway. Are you going to tell me all your secrets?"

The guy broke eye contact without waiting for a response - clearly not expecting one - and glanced over his shoulder at someone and said, "Either he's not the one we want, or he's exceptional at shielding."

A woman came into view over the psychic guy's shoulder. She looked quiet and unassuming, mouse brown hair loosely tied back, jeans and a white shirt, no power suit and dark glasses like he'd sort of been picturing, but there was a quiet confident strength in her expression and the way she held herself, and a tingle ran over Jared's skin. He recognized her as another psychic, though of a different category to the guy. He hadn't felt psychics of this strength before, Jeff and Jensen barely registered, just a slight waft of feeling when Jensen studied him, and their power scared him, in a way that just hearing about the coalition hadn't.

Because this was who it had to be.

The woman moved smoothly in front of him and cupped a hand to his cheek, and closed her eyes momentarily. "Oh," she said. "Oh, he's the one." Her brow creased slightly as she opened her eyes again, looking at - into - Jared. "I can't tell why or how or when."

The guy made a cut-off sound, and she darted a dark glance at him. "We already know he's something new. It's not a surprise I can't figure him out yet. We'll just have to - play around with him a little."

Jared wanted to scream, _you've got the wrong guy! It's not me!_ but his lips felt numb and his tongue sluggish, and the most he could manage was a wordless croak.

She stroked her fingers across his cheek again. "We'll figure out, you fascinating little creature. If not me, then Mr S will manage it."

With that she turned on her heel and walked briskly across the courtyard, the guy joining her side, and they headed into a tall glass building that cast a shadow across half the square. Jared shivered, fear wriggling cold and useless in his veins, and he thankfully let a growing muzzy cloud of darkness take him away again as he was dragged towards the building.

He'd been captured less than five hours after leaving the resistance base. He'd retraced the steps he'd taken with Jeff to get there, assuming - well, not assuming much of anything, but _hoping_ it would be as safe going out as it had been coming in. His head had been thick with too much emotion, and he'd needed to get out; out of where Jeff had brought him, that place where he'd stopped being _Jared_ and started being whatever Jeff thought he'd seen in his future. He'd been confused and upset, because on the one hand Jeff had touched him with a reverence he'd never felt from anyone before, and there hadn't been anything but honesty in his body as he'd moved over Jared, inside him. Jared was no psychic, but there were things - reading people, the old-fashioned way - that went beyond these new abilities. Jared couldn't imagine someone being able to lie deeply enough that it showed in each inch of his body, each hitch of breath, each careful touch. That night, he didn't believe Jeff was there with him for the resistance and what he saw in Jared's future; he was there for Jared, and the immediacy of them together, in that moment they both occupied.

But wishful thinking was powerful, Jared knew. And Jeff had lied to Jared from the moment he'd met him; and Jared didn't even know for sure, looking back, that he'd killed the guys because they were going to kill Jared, or just to make a point. To look like Jared's savior and be better placed to convince him to come back to the resistance.

Where he wouldn't even give Jared the choice that he'd said over and over was so important to everyone. Everyone else, apparently.

It scared Jared that he didn't know for sure; that what he thought he knew of Jeff could have been wrong from the moment he met him.

He hadn't known if he was heading back to Texas specifically, or just away, or even if he was going to be staying away, but he hadn't been paying attention. They'd come so fast, silent, and so ruthlessly efficient that he probably wouldn’t have fared any better if he had been paying attention.

This time - the second time Jared woke up after leaving Jeff - he had no illusions as to the reality of this world. His head still ached, and there was an unpleasant metallic sub-aural hum in the air, making his skin feel stifled and his mind fretful and caged in - he was guessing it was some sort of psychic dampener.

He was in a small, square white room - no, cell. Harsh fluorescent strip lighting in the high ceiling, a narrow hard bed that he was lying on, three plain walls and a criss-crossing grid of white painted metal bars facing out into a wide corridor.

Jared groaned and sat up, blinking hard. A cell identical to his own faced him across the corridor, and when he stumbled off the bed, staggered the few steps across the room on weak legs to nearly fall into the bars, he could see the corridor stretched down a long way in both directions, no clear end, with cells lining it on both sides.

The cell opposite his was empty, but there were people in others: a girl sat on the bed in the cell across from him and one to the right, her knees pulled up to her chest and her chin resting on top.

"Hey," said Jared, then, louder when she didn't react, "Hey!"

She looked up at the clanging noise when Jared hit the bars with the heel of his hand for emphasis, her eyes going wide and scared as she saw Jared.

"What's your name?" he asked, voice loud in the crushing silence, and she cringed, shook her head. When Jared called out to her again, she scooted around on the bed until her back was to him.

Jared dropped his head down to the bars and sighed. Then he lifted it again and took a better look around the cell.

Three walls, the bars, and a low white toilet in one corner. Not even a sink. Just that. No indication of privacy - and there was an anger, a shocked disbelieving rage building inside him.

There was no clear lock or even door on the bars, but as he turned slowly on the spot, he saw there was a small silver circle in one corner of the ceiling, a blank little rounded eye that Jared was sure saw a whole lot. He scowled at it.

"Still need cameras to keep an eye on your prisoners? Not as powerful as you think, huh," he sneered up to it, feeling reckless and pissed. "Keeping people down here like animals."

The anger was bubbling to red hot life within him, now, and he stalked a frustrated circle in the cell and fetched up at the bars again. These cells, life after life reduced to this ten by ten foot square, just because the luck that saved them from the event wasn't enough to keep them safe from the worst of human nature and those people who didn't see that it was _life_ , not power, that was important.

He gripped the bars tight enough his knuckles ached. He remembered in stark contrast the friendly, organized but relaxed vibrancy of life at the resistance base. Or even the life he'd seen outside of that - communities drawing together, like the one in the strip mall, the one Jeff had mentioned in the Castro, living their lives without bothering anyone, making the best of it. This, here - this was not life.

"You're the animals," he yelled, voice bouncing and echoing down the corridor. "You up there, all of you thinking you're better than us for nothing other than luck - thinking anything gives you the right to treat people like this! There's few enough of us left as it is, and this is what you spend your time and energy doing? You're everything that's always been wrong with--"

"That's quite enough of that," said a mild voice, and there was a woman standing in front of him the other side of the bars, having seemingly appeared from nowhere. Her voice was quiet but firm, clipped and British, and her expression looked bored and slightly disgusted, as though she was having to deal with an unruly puppy who hadn't been house trained. Jared seethed, and when the bars slid open, he tensed his body, ready to - he didn't quite know what - but as soon as it was open, the pressure in the air increased and Jared could barely move his leaden legs to step out of the cell, let alone attack or run.

She clicked her tongue irritably, and steadied him with a hand on his upper arm - and god, she was wearing _gloves_ , like she couldn't even bear to touch him.

"You _are_ causing a lot of trouble and excitement," she said, dragging him in stumbling steps along the corridor, her heels click-click-clicking smartly in contrast to the shuffling shamble of his steps, his feet feeling numbed. "Mr Stuart wants to see you. You should feel very honored. Not everybody gets face time with the man himself."

She turned her head slightly to glance at him, a supercilious look down her nose, which Jared distantly registered was quite impressive given that even slumped and stumbling he was still a head taller. "You don't look like anything special to me."

"Jealousy," managed Jared, numbness creeping up his face, and hoping he wasn't drooling," does not become you."

She made a noise in her throat and pulled him along harder.

When they eventually reached the end of the corridor, the blank white wall slid aside at her touch to reveal the inside of an elevator, which she pushed him into first, then stepped in after, keeping her distance.

Jared slumped in the corner, holding himself up with the waist-high rail, but thankfully as the door slid noiselessly shut and the elevator rose, the feeling started to lift and he straightened. He didn't miss the slightly nervous glance the lady gave him as he steadied himself, presumably looking less like death warmed over, and he wanted to feel smug. She wasn't so arrogant now, trapped in an elevator with someone she thought to be a big deal, especially as they rose away from whatever shit they were pumping into the cells to suppress people. But truth be told, he felt not much beyond fear and nerves himself.

And anger. That was still there, banked but smouldering.

\--

The office Jared was dragged into looked like any executive office; floor-to-ceiling windows, a desk, a couch and low table, the room done out in smooth polished oak and glass.

The man in the suit facing the windows was presumably who they'd come to see, but he didn't turn, just lifted a hand.

"Thank you, Lauren," he said smoothly. "You can leave him here."

Jared could sense her hesitating behind him. "Sir. Would you like me to fetch--"

"That will be all, Lauren, thank you." His voice grew a little sharper, and Lauren left swiftly, the door snicking closed.

Jared tightened his jaw, recognizing the intimidation tactics the man was employing as he allowed the silence to grow without turning around. He crossed his arms over his chest and refused to break.

"Please do sit down, Jared," said the man, still without turning. Jared pursed his lips, intending to do no such thing, until there was a ripple of power in the room, sending the hairs prickling hard on the back of Jared's neck. He found himself walking, feet moving in steady strides to the sofa, where he sat down, legs apart and his hands clasped on each knee.

The power disappeared as quickly as it had come, and Jared was left shaking and breathing hard, drawing his hands back into his chest and fighting the urge to draw his legs up as well, and curl into a ball on the plush leather couch. "What did you just--"

"Oh, don't bother. Outrage is very pointless, not to mention boring, and if you get too boring, I can just make you shut up."

Jared snapped his jaw shut, wanting more than anything else in the world to never feel that again, an alien force animating his limbs. The nausea was back, and his stomach rolled threateningly.

The man finally turned away from the window and strolled over to Jared, sitting neatly in an armchair across from him, legs crossed.

"Do you know who I am, Jared?"

Jared swallowed, badly shaken and deciding for now that cooperation was the better part of valour. "Mr Stuart," he guessed, from what Lauren had said. He wondered if Jeff and the resistance knew the name of the man in charge, or if that was kept within these walls.

"Please. James."

Jared sucked on his teeth, refusing to give in to that informality, as though they were friends.

James smiled. "Come now. You're angry at me, I can see."

"Of course I'm angry!" Jared said, unable to hold it back. "You - what you're doing to people here, it's disgusting. You're some self-styled tyrant and you're not going to get away--"

James laughed. "Do you know how this all started, Jared? The event, and our gifts?"

Gifts. There was a new one.

Jared shook his head. He'd heard differing rumours, of course, but he'd got the impression no-one truly knew. Some thought that it had been something secretive and governmental, perhaps, some experiment gone wrong; others that it was just nature's fist, somehow, in the way of volcanoes and tornadoes.

"Warfare," said James, confidently. "Don't ask me how I know. That's a stupid question. Biological weaponry, designed to destroy the enemy, wipe them out in a breath. Of course, side-effects are a bitch, aren't they?" He smiled again, then, and goosebumps raced over Jared's skin. "It was effective, too much so. Unbelievably contagious and, in the early stages of design, completely uncontainable. It raced from person to person faster than electricity through metal. We were the perfect conductors. One leak in one lab, and here we have it. A butterfly flaps its wings, causes a hurricane. An overworked lab assistant drops a test-tube, eradicates the human race as we know it." He spread his hands. "My point is, the human race is always trying to destroy itself. On this occasion, they nearly succeeded. God intervened, enough to move us along one step in our race's timeline, rather than extinct ourselves completely. It's no crime for myself and my associates to be making the best of it."

"Making--" Jared was near speechless. "You - you're acting like people are less than human just because they didn't get a great power. That's. Can't you see what that is?"

"That's human nature," said James, as if that made it okay. "And this time, it's not just fear or mindless bigotry. There is a tangible, visible difference - a practical categorisation. You can see how some like myself, for example, would never be able to be held in one of those cells. Yet the experiments cannot break out. They aren't able to. They are on a different level."

"Experiments?" said Jared blankly, then shook his head slowly, in disbelief. "God, you mean the _people_ you have down there? They're humans. They're like you or me. They aren't experiments. And you think the reason they can't escape is maybe because there are no doors and you've got some sort of weakening, psychic dampener pumped through the air?"

"They're useful to me as experiments, so that's what they are," said James dismissively, ignoring the latter part of what Jared said. "Anyway, we're - working on redefining the word. Human." He gave that smile again, the one that sent cold fingers dancing down Jared's spine, making his skin prickle. It was a small, white, terrifying smile, showing his teeth.

"Those with level 1 or 2, or the ones who survived with no power at all, Jared, did you know they're out there? Anomalies that quite disgust me, actually, but they've been useful to study - they classify as pre-human. Even those with powers at level 1 or 2 are pathetic enough to be as useless as the old species, before this new step in our evolution. You have to understand, Jared, we didn't do this. God did. It was He who brought the event, He who shoved us all headfirst into our next step. As if we needed more proof that God and evolution can co-exist. He gives it the push it needed. And we are just moving forward as He intended. Those at levels 3 through 6 get to retain the name. They are the new humans. And for those of us--"

He looked at Jared with a conspiratorial twinkle in his eye.

"Those of us who operate at level 7, we are the pro-humans."

"I'm not a level 7," said Jared, lamely, mind still spinning, unable to comprehend the depths of this insanity, except that insanity wasn't quite it. Arrogance, greed, supreme belief in his own righteousness and confidence in his horrendous logic, but it wasn't quite insanity. It was something worse.

"Oh, you're something," said James, still smiling that terrible shark's smile. "We intend to find out what."

"I can change the color of things!" Jared exploded, half rising from the couch, then sitting back down in it unbidden when James flicked a glance back at him. He swallowed hard as his gorge rose at the unbearable sensation of someone else controlling his body, some instruction bypassing his own brain completely and forcing his muscle. He couldn't fathom what else James could do with that.

"It's all I can do," he said, panting. "You - J-- they've all got it wrong. I can't _do anything_."

James' smiled dropped and he leaned forward in his chair, eyes flinty. "You can. And it _frustrates_ me that no-one can yet tell me what it is. Sam tells me you're important. That you are the key to the direction of our race's future. That you are more powerful than we can imagine. Fredric tells me that the _resistance_ \--" He spat out the word as though it tasted bad, "--found you and recruited you and call you a weapon, but even his furthest mental probes cannot give me any more detail than that. And so I decided that I would go to the source - or, rather, of course, bring the source to me. And I have you in front of me saying that you, also, do not know, and I'm afraid I find that unacceptable."

Jared swallowed, daring himself. "If--" he swallowed again. "If I did. Why would I even tell you?"

"Because--!" James jerked forward in his seat, hands clenching the arms of his chair convulsively, face going splotchy with anger. At Jared's flinch, he closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair, and took a deep breath, let it out through his nose. Then he opened his eyes again, and smiled, which did nothing to reassure Jared. "Because if you are indeed so powerful, then you will be at the top of our new society. Along with me, and the few others at our level. You can help shape our new world. I'll even let you keep some people, even at the lower levels. Pets, in a sense. I won't kill them. I won't kill you. We can work together, Jared, build a wonderful empire--"

"Stop," said Jared, horrified. "God, just stop. Even if I were powerful, I'd never work with you, for the coalition in any way. Never."

"You will. I will m-- I will show you it's the only way. Just tell me. Tell me what you are. Hey, here's a deal - tell me, and I'll call off my team."

"C-call off?" said Jared, stomach going cold and tight.

James laughed. "Oh, you precious child. Your little resistance has sent out a noble rescue effort. I have people closing in on them as we speak. I can call them off. Not that we'll let them rescue you, of course. But I can make sure they aren't harmed."

"No!" said Jared, heart racing hard and painful. "Don't hurt them! They aren't - they don't know anything, just leave them be!"

"Tell me."

"I don't _know_!" Jared near screamed. "I don't, I've never known anything, and everyone keeps telling me, and they're all _wrong_ \--"

James stood up, then, rage clear in every line of his body, and Jared felt his own mouth open against his will, as though James were trying to force the words to come out.

"I can make people do anything!" James yelled, spittle flying from his mouth, face red. "I can control every part of their body, I can work their muscles, pump their lungs and move their vocal cords to make them speak words they would never say, wrap their hands around a knife and kill children with a smile on their face; I can do anything and I will _make_ you tell me what you are!"

The terrible power forcing Jared's jaw open dropped, and Jared slumped, catching his head in his hands and shaking all over. "I don't know, I don't know," he found himself muttering, thinking of Jeff, of people coming to rescue him for nothing, they all had it wrong.

There was a thick silence, and then James breathed out hard, calm apparently regained. "Fine," he said. "Fine. I see we may need some more unorthodox methods."

Jared moaned as his body jerked upwards, then his mouth closed and his expression smoothed out along with his gait as James made him walk towards the door. He felt like he was screaming on the inside, trying to break out, but all he could manage was making his fingers twitch.

"You're a strong one," James commented as they walked out of the room. "Not easy to control. And Sam said you were completely shielded from her. It all adds up, Jared, that you do know something. We just need to find that place to wiggle in order to bring it out." They walked down the corridor, through a door, down another corridor, down some stairs, around twists and turns and more doors, locked and open, until Jared lost any sense of where they were. All he knew was the stumbling drag of his feet on the floor, James' compulsion strung tight and invasive throughout his body, and under that, an animal of fear growing cold and voracious in his belly.

  


Jared struggled to keep track of time as they kept walking. It was as though his body could do nothing but fight helplessly against James' compulsion, and all he was aware of was he achedby the time they stopped. The corridor they were in looked the same as the ones they'd been passing through, but when James opened the door, the room beyond scared Jared so badly when he saw it that he managed to break free from James' control for a moment, his whole body twitching and his steps going backwards in stumbling lurches towards the door, until James grabbed his wrist and re-exerted his power.

"You little _bitch_ ," James ground out, dragging Jared across the room and forcing him down into the chair. It looked a little like a dentist's chair crossed with a hair-salon seat, metal cup tipped back for the head and bonus buckles at the wrists, ankles and across the body. James pushed him into the chair and managed to get Jared strapped in, Jared trying to fight all the way but not managing much more than weak flails. Once the last strap was secured, James stepped away, brushing his hands off with a grimace of distaste, and finally dropped his power. Jared's body was his own again, and he thrashed hard against the restraints in fear and in relief that he could move, but the holds stayed firm.

James frowned at him. "Stay still, you infuriating pest. And don't even think of trying to get out." With that, he left the room.

It took Jared a good few minutes of fighting against the bonds and nearly hyperventilating to calm himself enough to get his breath back and assess the room. If he craned his neck too far forward, his forehead knocked against the large metal dome that surrounded the top of his head, but he could see most of the room. The room was cold and industrial, with concrete walls and a plain white floor, in contrast to the lush, rich-looking comfort and style that James' office and the corridors and other rooms they'd passed through had possessed. This was no place for show.

There were banks of computers lining one wall, and large screens mounted on the wall above them showed graph read-outs that remained steady for now. The opposite wall was mostly taken up by a large mirrored screen that was almost certainly a one-way observation booth on the other side. This room was presumably one of the places that some of their experimentation happened.

Yet for now, all Jared could think of was that Jeff - because it had to be Jeff that had come for him - and others were in danger right now and he couldn't do anything.

"Don't hurt them," he blurted out as soon as the door opened again an indeterminate amount of time later. It wasn't James who entered first. It was the lady who'd touched him in the courtyard. "I swear, I don't know anything, you can get someone to prove I'm not lying, you must have someone, and you can do anything you want to me, just don't hurt them."

The lady entered the room fully, and James followed her in. She shot a look that seemed inexplicably smug back at him, and didn't say a word in response to Jared.

James came to stand in front of him. "Well done for staying there. Now, I was planning on using a few physical stimulations on you, electrodes can loosen a tongue and a mind, I've discovered - but Sam here thinks there's a better way to get you to open up. And you seemed to have proved her right."

He looked over at her - Sam - and she nodded back at him, shifted her gaze to Jared. "I knew from the moment I touched you that you are something special," she said. "I believe I told you as much. And special people need a special touch, something Mr Stuart here isn't always sensitive enough to understand. With the utmost respect, sir," she said, not taking her eyes off Jared.

"Of course," said James, sounding amused.

"And it's quite clear that for you, your personal attachments are powerful - which means, of course, they're your weak point." At this, she came closer, passed Jared, then went to stand behind him, and Jared could tell from the faint clink of her ring on the dome that she'd placed her hands flat on the metal.

"One of my many specialties," she said, "is mental projection." She made a dismissive noise. "I won't go into the complexities. What this means is that, once I've been to a place, I can leave a little part of myself there, and observe it at any point I want. And, as I wish, I can project that to someone else. Like you, for example." Jared could feel it as her power started to flow; the air around his head inside the dome started to heat, then that unique psychic prickle began at the base of his skull and his vision started to waver. It flashed in and out a few times, went spotty - he could see the concrete walls and computers and James' smirking face, and then nothing, then the room, then--

He couldn't make out what he was seeing at first.

It was a chaos of movement, bodies, light, color and _noise._ It resolved in a rush, and it was the courtyard outside the glass building, the one Jared had been dragged through earlier. It was no longer the calm and peaceful place Jared had seen earlier; it was a battlefield. At first that was all he could tell, but then he recognized people - Genevieve, flames pouring in a great red and orange torrent from her eyes like something from a superhero movie and - and _Jeff_ , and upon seeing him, Jared's whole body gave a jolt, his shackles clanking. "No!" he cried out uselessly.

Jensen was there, ducking behind the bronze statue, pants wet to the knee from the fountain, one hand knuckled hard into his temple as though fighting off psychic pain; and Kim had a machete held in front of her, rushing to Jensen's aide before a blond-haired man flicked his wrist and sent her flying bodily across the square. Jared's chest ached for them, for their stupid bravery, for trying to get him - whether they cared about him as a weapon or a person, they were risking their lives for him, and they were good people, but they were wrong, they had to be.

And really, all Jared could see was Jeff. He was holding steady, both hands on his gun, pulling the trigger over and over; the reports were loud and stark and seemed to echo with a tinny unreal sound around the metal dome covering Jared's head, where the vision was emanating from.

A woman in all black ran out of the building, dropped to a crouch just behind the fountain and shoved both her hands out, palms towards Jeff. Jared saw Jeff waver at the shockwave of power, his gun dropping and one hand –clutching at his head. Jeff shook himself, roared, then tore his hand away, face twisted in pain, and raised the gun back up to shoot. His recovery was clearly not what she was expecting: she took his bullet to the center of her chest with a surprised expression, body jerking backward before crumpling to the ground. The pain left Jeff's face, and he was blankly determined in its wake. Focused. All he was trying to do was get to Jared, and Jared believed - maybe it was wishful thinking, because maybe they were both gonna die and it did no harm to think it - but, god, Jared _believed_ so hard in that moment that for Jeff it wasn't for the weapon. It was for Jared.

And maybe that would be enough.

He could hear James talking, making threats against Jeff, the others, about how he could stop the petty fighting and execute them all with a thought if Jared didn't tell him what he wanted to hear, but Jared wasn't really paying attention. His world was narrowed down to Jeff, the shape of him, his broad shoulders and steady aim as he started taking confident steps through the square, towards the entrance of the building. Jeff wasn't even that powerful, he had no ability that could help him in a fight like this, but Jeff was so much more than his ability. He was Jeff, and he was gonna save Jared.

Jared smiled, a soft curve of his mouth, and that was when it happened.

The blond-haired man who'd attacked Kim earlier was back - he ducked and slid under a torrent of flame and fetched up on his knees facing Jeff's back. He deftly pulled a handgun from a holster on his thigh, pointed it at Jeff's unaware back, and fired.

" _Jeff_!" Jared was dimly aware he was crying out, struggling hard against his restraints, throat straining and bulging with his scream to warn Jeff, tell him to look out, because it felt like Jared was just _there_ , feet away, but he wasn't, he was all the way inside and there was no way Jeff could hear him regardless of how hard he screamed.

No-one warned Jeff, no-one even seemed to see except for Jared and the shooter. The report was loud, deafening, horrendous, and Jeff jerked forward _hard_ , landing fast and abrupt on his knees then propelled forward to sprawl still on the floor. The battle raged around them, a wave of Genevieve's flame obscured Jared's view of the - of Jeff, and he craned his head, because surely Jeff was going to get up any moment--

"Shit," he heard distantly from behind him, and Sam lifted her hands off the dome. The vision flickered and died, and Jared was staring out at the room, James no longer in front of him, just a blank wall.

"No," said Jared, almost calmly. "No, take me back." He had to see, because that wasn't what was supposed to happen. Jeff was - Jeff was going to come in here and rescue him. Jeff was--

"We just lost our fucking leverage," Sam was saying, irritably. "Is your attack team that damn stupid?"

"What are you talking about?" James sounded impatient. "It shows him we're not kidding. We can tell him that unless he spills his precious secret, the rest go the same way."

"You don't get it - that guy, the big guy, he's all this one cares about - the rest are chaff. You're all give and push, no take and feel in the psychic department."

"Watch your tone."

Jared wasn't really paying attention, and their voices started to fade, because something peculiar was happening.

He kept seeing it, over and over again - Jeff lying there, still, so still, his face hidden from Jared, his hands limp on the hard ground. Hands that had saved Jared, and touched him, and--

Jared was breathing in labored gasps, his heart beating a painful shocky rhythm against his ribs. It felt as though there was a concrete block resting on his chest, the pressure crushing and unbearable; his eyes were hot, his face burning with a feeling so strong he didn't even know if he could cry it out. His throat felt swollen shut, aching and hard, air scraping past in frantic little slips. His vision went hazy, dark and spotty at the edges, and there was a dull roaring in his ears. The room disappeared, and Jared was inside himself. He could feel each inch of his body, each muscle and organ frozen, locked tight with grief and guilt and loss and helpless, useless love--

\--and everything started to change. The tingle started in his toes, but the knowledge, that sensation of _unlocking_ , started deep in his chest, in the vital parts of himself that held his life and the hot ball of his emotions, the two interchangeable. Tendrils of something new snaked out from where it hurt the most, a contagious burst of sensation shuddering from each cell to the next in a starburst throughout his body, and he got it.

He was breaking open the rest of the way. This was what had happened to every person after the event; that which should have killed them instead racing through their body, cell to cell, freeing some secret parts of themselves, ripping open some long-hidden biology that woke up, vibrant and ready, and gave them these new functions.

It had happened to Jared, like everyone, but something had gone wrong with him. It had gotten stuck, like the teeth of a zipper misaligning part of the way down, jarring to a stop; and now, this feeling. This reverberating shock of feeling had dug into his chest, woken his cells up again like a shot of adrenaline injected deep, and tugged that zipper all the way down, splitting him open.

He didn't know how long it took - it could have been seconds or hours. When he opened his eyes, James was in front of him again, leaning over Jared in a way that was probably supposed to be menacing. "Talk to me!" he was shouting. "Wake up and talk to me!"

Jared looked at him, and James smiled. "Finally," he said. "Ready to talk, are we?"

Jared nodded yes.

James smirked. "Tell me what you do."

"I change--" _the color of things._ "I change things." Jared flexed his fingers; yes, that was it. He could change things. And he was important. He was what everyone had said, because he could _change things_.

He looked down at his shackles, the thick leather and solid steel of them, and reached in, changed them. Before, he'd changed the color. Now, he just changed them. Changed them into air, and they melted away. He looked back up at James, who was staring at him with pure shock. Jared stood up, a dreamlike calm sinking over him. And maybe that was some fear in James' face, there. Good. The man deserved it.

"Sit back down! Right now!" shouted James, and used his compulsion on Jared. Jared ignored it, and took a step towards James.

"You're very dangerous," he informed him. "You shouldn't be trusted with your particular power." Then he looked inside James, and changed him - changed all the cells and genes and proteins and forces inside him that created his power, and changed them into nothing.

"There you go," he said, as James staggered backwards, clearly feeling the loss of it, the loss of the power that had been his everything. "Now you're - what was it? Just - pre-human."

"You can't do that!" said James, not scary at all now. He looked over the room to where Sam was pressed against the wall, like she was trying to stay inconspicuous. "I'm sorry," she said. "I couldn't - I didn't see _this_. What is he?"

"Come here!" said James - barked it, a command, trying so hard to compel her that it was pathetic.

Sam just shook her head, glanced at Jared and bolted for the door.

"Wait," said Jared, and changed the door to locked. "You're dangerous too. Sorry," he said, and turned off her power, too, then made the door disappear and let her run.

Then he remembered. _Jeff_. He could change him. He could change him to okay again. He followed Sam out of the door, but soon lost her, and tightened his mouth in frustration. He thought about changing the building to not-there just so he could get outside, but thought it might hurt a lot of people, and there were many here who didn't deserve to be hurt. The people in the cells.

Through one door he met a woman at a desk, who startled badly when Jared walked in. "What--" she said. "That door was locked!"

Jared kept walking, so she flung her hands up at him, electricity crackling at her palms, but Jared turned her off, too. She stumbled back against the desk. "Don't hurt me," she started to plead.

"Tell me how to get out of here."

She tracked his face with wide scared eyes, clearly too frightened to comprehend him. Yet she had no problem with the scared people the coalition was imprisoning in the lower levels. Jared growled in frustration, then looked at her thoughtfully. He stepped in close, ignoring her flinch, and reached inside himself. He changed some of his power to psychic, and looked back at her. It was like putting on a pair of magic glasses; he could see her mind, the twisty-turny landscape of knowledge. It seemed impossible to navigate at first, but he looked hard, thought about what he wanted from her, and it drifted to the surface. He copied the knowledge into his own mind, then withdrew.

"Thanks," he said, and she watched him go silently.

When he walked out into the square, there was still fighting going on. He glanced around and turned off the powers of all the coalition side. Then, because some of them had guns, he reached in and changed their consciousness, too. Just to put them to sleep for a little while.

There was an eerie silence that followed after the coalition bodies slumped on the ground. Genevieve and Jensen stood, suddenly still either side of the fountain, staring at him.

"Jared--?" Genevieve tried. "You - are you okay?"

 

"Jeff," Jared said, which probably was rude but that was all he could say.

Genevieve swapped a glance with Jensen, who gestured behind him, and stepped aside.

Jeff was - Jeff was sitting up. Kim was kneeling next to him, holding a gun as though she'd been protecting them just seconds ago. Jeff looked groggy but alive, and Jared walked over to him and sat crosslegged next to him.

Jeff looked at him with wide eyes, blinked sluggishly.

Kim lowered the gun, keeping her hand on it, and stayed quiet.

"Jared?" said Jeff, slowly, disbelieving.

"I thought I'd have to change you," said Jared.

Jeff' brow creased. "What?"

"Sorry," said Jared, then hissed out a frustrated sigh and rubbed his forehead. He couldn't think. He felt weird and tired. "I saw them shoot you. I thought--" he cut himself off, because it was obvious what he'd thought, and he didn't know if he could say it anyway without embarrassing himself. "Jeff," he said, instead, like a plea.

"Ah," said Kim, "that was me. I mean, no!" she added hastily, when Jared looked at her. "It wasn't _me_ , me. I mean, I was on the floor and I saw this guy shoot at Jeff, and I - I managed to push Jeff over. With my telekinesis, I mean. I never knew I could do that, but you know - when it calls for it. I knocked him out cold and the bullet still grazed his shoulder pretty bad, but--" She shrugged, like Jeff being alive wasn't the most wonderful thing.

Jared swayed, and she put a concerned hand on his arm. "Are you okay?" she said.

"Thank you," he said. "Thank you--" because Jeff was alive because of her and he didn't have to change Jeff. That might not have worked. Jeff was here.

He looked back at Jeff and leaned in, and Jeff was the one looking at him with concern now. "You were right," he said, and rested his forehead on Jeff's collarbone. Jeff's hand came to rest big and comforting on the back of his neck.

"I'm always right, kiddo," he rumbled, then, "About what?"

"I'm important."

Jeff's hand tightened on his neck slightly, and Jared forced himself to sit back up, because he knew this was important, even if all that felt important right now was that he had Jeff here.

"Jared, what do you mean?"

"Something happened to me," he tried to explain. "They had me in a room, and they were trying to find out why you and everyone thought I was so special. I tried to tell them they were wrong but they thought I was lying. They strapped me in and - they were going to electrocute me--"

"Shit," said Jeff fiercely, and grabbed Jared's knee with his other hand.

"It's okay, they didn't. They showed me you guys fighting and said they would kill you all, and you got shot and I - felt really bad," he said lamely. "And it happened."

"What happened?"

Jared struggled to find the words. "Something unlocked inside me. I can do a lot more stuff, now. I can change things."

"Get Gen and Jensen," Jeff said to Kim. "We're getting out of here."

Then he looked back at Jared. "When you say, change things--"

"I can change anything to anything. Like, before it was just colors, but the rest of it was trapped. It had to--" he made an expansive gesture with his hands. "Explode out the rest of the way. I can change materials into other materials, or into nothing. And--" then he paused and looked around, his rational brain trying to come back online long enough to let him know this was not something he should shout from the rooftops.

"What?"

"I can change people's powers," he said, low. "Turn them off. Or on, I guess. Or make them more powerful. Or change what they can do." He shrugged helplessly. "I don't know how. I - I can change things."

"Holy shit, kiddo," Jeff said.

"I'm really tired," said Jared, realizing as he said it that he wasn't just tired, he was drained. Exhausted. Maybe he could reach into himself, change that, change his tiredness to energy - but he was too tired.

He could feel Jeff picking him up, hefting him against his chest with a grunt and lifting him, and the motion of being carried. Then he was out.

  


When Jared woke up the next time he didn't open his eyes right away. His awareness grew in stages - the low crackling sound of a fire, the murmur of voices, the softness of a blanket over him. He felt a little achy, but rested, and his headache had finally subsided. He felt grounded and present in his body, only realizing now just how odd he'd felt earlier. When he'd used his powers - his true powers. God. It seemed unreal. It had clearly taken a hell of a lot out of him.

He lay awake for a while, feigning sleep, knowing he was safe. He slowly remembered the girl in the office, finding his way out of the building and turning on a psychic ability within himself, and that he hadn't turned it off. He could feel it now, a comfortable knowledge of the indistinct but familiar shape of other's minds close by: Kim's, Jensen's, Gen's. Jeff's. The closest. He reached out for it, wondering at how something he'd never felt before - the shapes and colors of Jeff's mind - with a sense he'd never used before, could feel so familiar. He went in, further, could see-without-seeing the shapes of Jeff's thoughts and emotions and memories curling around him. He thought of himself, and, and there he was, so big and important and loved in Jeff's mind; regret and guilt and hope and fear in a haze around him, and the part of him that Jeff had seen at the beginning, the part that was coming to pass right now, was such a small part of it all, really. There was so much more.

Then Jared stopped, drew back, guilt creeping in. He hadn't told Jeff he could do this, and hadn't asked permission. Jeff hadn't invited him in, and all this wasn't his to know. He withdrew, shivered at the loss, and then reached inside himself and turned it off. It was a hell of a temptation.

He hadn't noticed how hard it was before. It was easy to do - it was just a thought, whatever it was he wanted to change - but it took energy that he hadn't been aware he was expending; a sapping tug of strength each time he used it. He was left short of breath, a light prickle of sweat on his forehead, and he couldn't feign sleep tensed and panting like this. But he was ready to be awake, now.

He opened his eyes. Jeff's attention was on him already, face half-lit by the shifting orange firelight. He looked tired but he was alive and right there, and Jared couldn't help but smile at him. "Hey," he said.

"You're awake," said Jeff, then shook his head. "Obviously. Hey, you. How you feeling?"

"Mmm," said Jared, and stretched his arms above his head, groaning at the pull on his muscles. "God. Better. How long was I out?"

Jeff smirked, though relief was clear in each line of his face. "Almost fourteen hours, kiddo."

Jared blinked. "Holy shit. Really?"

Jeff nodded. "You'd been through a hell of a lot, looked like. Reckon you needed it. You were pretty out of it, toward the end there."

Jared flushed. "Yeah, sorry. I don't think I was making much sense."

Jeff shrugged, moved his leg so his knee knocked against Jared's thigh. "Made enough sense to scare me a little. I wasn't a hundred percent sure you were gonna wake up." His eyes were intense on Jared, and Jared smiled, shrugged one shoulder.

"Went to so much effort, it would've been a shame to miss out on whatever comes next."

Jeff nodded. "About that. You need to tell me what went down, because - this was it, wasn't it? What I saw. Why you're so important."

Jared looked away and nodded. "Yeah. I - I was so sure everyone was wrong. I guess that was a part of it. Maybe it wouldn't have worked out like it did if I'd thought I really was powerful. I don't know. But it did happen and--" He swallowed. "I'm sort of scared, but. This _is_ it, isn't it? This is how I shape the fate of the world, or whatever."

"Somehow," said Jeff. "You said you could change things, right? Maybe changing the fate of the world is one of those things." His mouth curled up at the corner.

"No big," Jared agreed, and laughed shortly. "Fuck. I have no idea what I'm doing. I turned them off, you know? The guy who was in charge over there, the big man on top, the head of the coalition. Just turned his power off like that. I can _do_ that. It's crazy."

Jeff sucked in a breath through his teeth. "That's going to make a lot of people very scared of you, you realize. If this gets out."

Jared looked up. He hadn't even thought of what this would mean in a wider sense - but it would, of course. No-one would be happy with knowing there was someone out there who could just defuse them with a blink.

"I won't - I won't use it on anyone from our side," said Jared lamely.

"God, I know you won't - but other people are going to see you as a threat. You can turn people's abilities off with a thought, Jared. Hell, you could probably kill them with a thought. Even on our side, that's scary - for some people they believe they're vulnerable without their power, and in some way, that's true. People are going to be scared of you. We need to be careful about this. "

Jeff turned his head, then, and put his fingers in his mouth, let out a short sharp whistle over towards where Jensen, Kim and Gen were sitting around what looked like a card game the other side of the fire.

They started and turned to look, and Jeff grinned.

"You can stop trying not to eavesdrop now," he said, and beckoned them over.

"Uh," said Jared awkwardly, looking around as they sat down close by, facing him. "I just - I need to thank you guys. Like, so much."

Gen shrugged. "It's--"

"No, seriously, I mean it. I'm sorry I ran off and made you all come after me, and thank you for listening to Jeff and risking yourselves for me and fighting and everything. And, um, Kim - thanks. For, you know." He jerked a thumb at Jeff. "Saving this dumb idiot."

Jeff groaned quietly in embarrassment and Kim grinned big. "No problem," she said. "Y'all are too cute."

Genevieve cleared her throat. "Not that I disagree," she said, with a smirk, "but this is big stuff. If Jared can do all that--"

"I can," he said. "It takes a lot out of me, but I did a lot yesterday. I turned powers off, created my own, turned things into other things. Look," he said, and picked up a rock. He changed it into wood, first, then into sand, which spilled in between his fingers; then a palmful of water, which spilled out even more; then turned it all into air, his palm left empty and dry.

He let out a breath and flexed his fingers. That kind of basic changing seemed easier that the effort it took to work on people's powers; but he could still tell he'd done it.

"Holy fuck," breathed Jensen.

"Pretty much," said Jared, and smiled, quick. "I don't - I know it sounds scary, but I promise I won't--"

"Oh shut up, Jared," said Genevieve. "Give us some credit. We know you - and more importantly, we know Jeff - well enough that we know you aren't the one to be scared of. But Jeff was right," she said, sending an apologetic glance at him before focusing back at Jared. "Other people will not understand. Even - perhaps especially - those on the same side, in as much as anything breaks down into tidy sides, which is rarer than we'd all like." She looked around. "I propose it stays here. Between us. I don't know how much is going to come out of the coalition, but by their very definition, they are not going to want it made public to anyone that some of their most powerful people have been stripped of that power. To them, abilities are paramount, and if people think that could be lost, their entire structure breaks down. They won't let it slip. And we can keep it under wraps, shield our minds like Jensen can train us to do, and we make a careful plan. Before panic."

Jensen nodded. "I can do that. I've been working on shielding a lot recently - some techniques I haven't even tried out with others yet. It's -" He glanced around. "It won't be permanent. One of us will slip. Even with the best will in the world, this sort of thing is inevitable whether it comes from us or somewhere else. But we can buy ourselves some time."

Jeff nodded, looking sort of red around the eyes. "Thank you guys. Really. I put you in a hell of a situation asking you to come with me, and you--"

"Ah, your turn to shut up, Jeff." said Gen amiably. "We're a team. Hell, you said it - we're family, and we watch out for our own. Cheesy as all hell, but fuck it, we are supposed to be the good guys. We're allowed a little cheese."

Jared looked away from Jeff before he did something stupid and probably inappropriate, and looked back to Gen. "When you say plan, what are we thinking?"

"We need a plan of action. What's best for us as the resistance, and what's best for you. How to manage your powers, your limits, your strengths - if that's okay? It might not be the most comfortable--"

"Anything," said Jared. "I want to help. I need to. I'd spend weeks exhausting myself trying to help you guys before I'd go back to the room they had me in. I'm not even scared of it, you know?"

Kim reached over and put a hand on his knees. "We'll make a soldier of you yet," she said, though she looked a little wistful as she did.

Genevieve ran a hand through her hair. "Once we have a handle on how to use you, we - God, sorry. I don't mean to talk about you like a weapon, I just--"

Jared shook his head. He got it, now. He was a weapon, in a way, but it was also his choice, and he wasn't _just_ that to anyone here. "I get you. It's fine."

She nodded. "Then we strategize." She grinned. "I might be looking forward to that just a little." Her eyes were bright in the light of the fire, and Jared was supremely glad she was on their side, and in his corner.

"Where are we, by the way?" he said, curious.

"A field off the highway outside of Thousand Oaks, pretty sure," answered Jensen. "We made it here surprisingly easy. I think they were all too busy freaking out and trying to hide the carnage and their powerless boss to give pursuit. They will come after you, though, Jared, you're one hell of a liability to them, so we gotta be careful. We're pretty shielded, in a psychic sense, and Kim has a few projections keeping guard--"

That explained her slight distracted look; it couldn't have been easy to keep track of multiple projections of yourself plus your physical body.

"--but I'm not as powerful as some of their guys,” Jensen continued. “Though you might have put at least one of their top dogs out of commission, which is good."

"The point is, we're being extra careful," said Jeff, with a warning glance, as though he was worried about them scaring Jared with this talk of pursuit and vigilance.

"You do forget," Jared said mildly, "that I can turn myself into a psychic more powerful than any of theirs were? And if anyone does try and attack us, I can defuse them instantly? We're pretty well protected against any eventuality. It tires me out, but I _can_ still do all that."

"Well," said Genevieve, almost obstinately, "we didn't know that before. Also, you were out cold for forever and a day."

Jared grinned. "True enough. But Kim," he said, "you can call yourself in, if you want. I think you need a break."

Kim glanced at Genevieve, who nodded, and she blinked and sighed, then slumped her shoulders in relief. "Thanks."

Jared tried it - changed himself, turned on the parts that needed to be turned on, created a psychic projection of himself and sent it wandering out into the field. He could sense the others watching him and he half closed his eyes and concentrated. At the same time, he could sense the field, the swish of the grass as he sent his projection through it, could see for miles as he raised it up, could hear the birds and see the spray of stars and everything that Jared's physical body, sitting so close by the fire, had seen none of. Dual sensory input; yet it was surprisingly easy for him to filter out.

He blinked his eyes open and grinned. He was panting slightly, and he was sweating again, but it was worth it for the satisfaction he felt. "That's pretty awesome," he said. "Jared-2 can keep watch tonight. Y'all can sleep."

Genevieve and Jensen exchanged glances; then Gen smiled, a brilliant wide grin that made her beauty go from subtle to vibrant. "I think we'll keep you around," she declared. "I am more than happy to take you up on the offer of bedtime." Then she smirked and glanced at Jeff, and said, "Not like _that_. That's your domain, chief."

Jeff groaned and Jared blushed and felt himself smile, stupidly and helplessly.

Jeff settled down to sleep as the others all did, lying close to Jared; after a while, maybe half an hour, when the others' breathing evened out, Jeff whispered, "You awake, Jared?"

Jared nodded. "Yeah," he whispered back. "I slept fourteen hours, I'm not ready to go back to sleep yet."

Jeff twisted to look over at him, his smile and flash of white in the dim. "Want to take a walk?"

Jared felt hot and giddy in his chest, which was stupid. He knew how Jeff felt about him, all the tangled web of good and bad, and how he felt about Jeff, and they'd fucked. There was no reason for him to be acting like a teenager with a crush on the hot older guy.

He couldn't say he hated it, though, this fizzy weightlessness in his chest that not even a full day ago had been crushed with loss. Anything was better than that.

Jared connected with his projection, made it turn more towards their sleeping camp to keep an eye on the others as Jared and Jeff clambered out of their sleeping bags, took blankets against the settling chill of the night, and walked away. They were side by side, shoulders bumping, silent at first, until Jared remembered he had to apologize for something.

"Hey," he said. "I have to say sorry for something you didn't know I did."

"Uh," said Jeff. "Okay?"

"Yesterday, or - whenever. At the courtyard. I turned on a psychic ability - inside myself, I mean - to help me get out. I didn't turn it off, and today, when I woke up, I went into your mind. I wasn't thinking," he said, hastily, “and I didn't poke around, and I'm sorry, but I know it sucked of me. It wasn't my right to invade your mental privacy, and I--"

"Hey, Jared. Stop - wait." Jeff took a hold of Jared's elbow. "I don't care."

Jared opened his mouth, then closed it again.

"I mean it," Jeff said. "I don't care. Dig around, if you want. I got nothing to hide from you. I learned that lesson. I'm not big on sappy declarations, but you gotta know how I - you know - look, actually. Please go in there again. Then I don't gotta say it."

Jared smiled. "Nah," he said. "That's good enough for me. Especially when you go all red."

"Ah, fuck you. I take it back."

"You didn't even say anything."

"I take it back anyway. You're a pain in my ass."

"I love you too, you know."

"Christ."

Jared laughed then, a smile tugging at his mouth. "God," he said. "Fuck. Fuck."

Jeff went from avoidant to concerned in a flash. "What?"

"No, god, nothing - nothing bad," said Jared, turning into Jeff and crowding in close. "I just - god. I thought you were dead. You _were_ dead, for me. And now you're not, you're here and I'm here - and I get to tell you stuff, and you--" He shook his head, snuck his hands out from under his blanket and wormed them under Jeff's to rest on his hips, leaned in ‘til their foreheads were touching. "It's pretty awesome, is all I'm saying."

Jeff kissed him, tipped his head up, and Jared didn't think he'd ever get tired of this, the electrifying rasp of Jeff's beard against his skin, the shocking softness of Jeff's lips, the slick heat of his tongue slipping into Jared's mouth; the solid heft of Jeff's body as he slid an arm around Jared's waist and tugged him in sharp.

"I thought I'd lost you," Jeff said, mouth bumping against Jared's. "More times than I want to count. I kept thinking - this is it, I fucked it up. And you keep being there."

"Like a cockroach," agreed Jared, giddy grin still tugging at his mouth. Jeff laughed, then pulled back, rested his forehead on Jared's for a moment, then pulled back again to look at him.

"What Genevieve said," he started. "About - testing you, and strategizing. You don't have to do that. We can work it out."

Jared frowned. "No," he said. "No, I want to do it. I can't say I'm not scared, because that would be a pretty stupendous lie, but I'm ready."

"Can I apologize for something now?" said Jeff, looking away.

Jared tilted his head. "What?"

"I can't regret this, any of it. Even though I know it scares you and I want to wish it didn't have to be you, because it's so much pressure and responsibility you never asked for. But I can't regret it, I can't wish any part of it were different, because seeing it brought me to you. It gave me you, and I--"

Jared moved his hands from Jeff's waist to his arms, wrapped his fingers around Jeff's forearms, testing the corded strength of them and rubbing his thumbs over the tendons and skin.

"Listen to me, okay?" he said, fiercely. "It _is_ scary. It's terrifying, and it's never something I would have asked for before. But now - you showed me what it was to want to fight for something. Not just you, but for people. Ideals. I would've stayed totally blind to it if not for you. And after what I saw when I was there - now I want to help, like I'm lucky than maybe I can make a difference." He bit his lip. "I'm so scared, because I don't even know what I'm supposed to do with all this. But I'm glad, too. Because I can make things better, and--"

He stopped, took a breath. "And every time I think it's too much, that I wish it had been someone else, I think - then maybe that someone else would be standing here with you right now. And that's--" He shook his head. "That's not acceptable. You're mine. This is where I am and who I am, and you - this is all mine. No-one else can have it."

He kissed Jeff then, to make himself shut up, because of the way Jeff was looking at him and because he wanted to and he could. Because he didn't know what was going to happen, but right now, with Jeff in front of him and a newfound group of people at his back, Jared was happy.

The world had gone to hell, but that was okay. Everything was going to be okay. The world could change.

THE END


End file.
